Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £75,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 16 July 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 370 478 559
Rank change year-on-year +108 +81 -22
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 496 203 357
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.41% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.46% 0.37%
Number of salaries quoted 323 101 221
10th Percentile £49,000 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £67,500 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +7.35% -3.26%
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £68,360 £60,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +13.93% -4.00% +4.17%

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 93,088 44,174 95,628
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.23% 89.90% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 63,779 26,115 68,243
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year - +4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -5.12%

Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Data Scientist' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK

Data Scientist
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Scientist over the 6 months to 16 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 16 July 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +136 467 £75,000 +15.38% 119
UK excluding London +60 276 £68,360 +13.93% 81
London +78 200 £80,000 -1.54% 69
Work from Home +30 154 £66,720 +3.44% 52
North of England +38 92 £75,000 +36.36% 22
Midlands +49 83 £60,000 +1.27% 5
East Midlands +31 70 £62,500 +4.24%
North West +50 68 £75,000 +42.86% 9
South West -56 51 £60,000 -25.00% 12
South East +3 24 £50,000 -4.76% 24
East of England -1 13 £75,863 +45.89% 4
Yorkshire -26 13 £79,000 +23.44% 8
West Midlands -27 13 £55,000 -7.17% 5
North East -44 11 £80,000 +53.85% 5
Wales -46 8 £82,500 -2.94% 7
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
Scotland +7 2 - - 7

Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 July 2026, Data Scientist job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Data Scientist in the job title.

1 489 (98.59%) Data Science
2 249 (50.20%) Machine Learning
3 205 (41.33%) Python
4 186 (37.50%) AI
5 150 (30.24%) Analytics
6 116 (23.39%) SQL
7 74 (14.92%) Actionable Insight
8 73 (14.72%) Degree
8 73 (14.72%) MLOps
9 71 (14.31%) Mentoring
10 68 (13.71%) Statistics
11 61 (12.30%) Decision-Making
12 58 (11.69%) Azure
12 58 (11.69%) Roadmaps
13 57 (11.49%) AWS
14 53 (10.69%) Generative AI
15 51 (10.28%) PyTorch
15 51 (10.28%) Visualisation
16 48 (9.68%) LLM
16 48 (9.68%) Mathematics
17 47 (9.48%) Deep Learning
18 43 (8.67%) Natural Language Processing
19 41 (8.27%) GCP
19 41 (8.27%) TensorFlow
20 39 (7.86%) CI/CD
21 38 (7.66%) Software Engineering
22 37 (7.46%) Predictive Modelling
23 35 (7.06%) Feature Engineering
23 35 (7.06%) Security Cleared
24 33 (6.65%) Agile

Data Scientist Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 19 (3.83%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.21%) SAS
3 2 (0.40%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.40%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (0.60%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 58 (11.69%) Azure
2 57 (11.49%) AWS
3 41 (8.27%) GCP
4 29 (5.85%) Power Platform
5 14 (2.82%) SaaS
6 10 (2.02%) Azure Machine Learning
6 10 (2.02%) dbt
7 6 (1.21%) Amazon SageMaker
7 6 (1.21%) Dataform
7 6 (1.21%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.81%) Serverless
8 4 (0.81%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.60%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.60%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.60%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.40%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.01%) Broadband
2 4 (0.81%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.60%) 5G
4 2 (0.40%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.85%) Power BI
2 18 (3.63%) Tableau
3 15 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
4 11 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (2.02%) Looker
6 7 (1.41%) Big Data
7 6 (1.21%) Metabase
8 3 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.60%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.60%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.40%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.40%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.40%) GIS
9 2 (0.40%) QGIS
9 2 (0.40%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.20%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 21 (4.23%) Git
2 8 (1.61%) MLflow
3 2 (0.40%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 108 (21.77%) Finance
2 70 (14.11%) Analytical Skills
3 55 (11.09%) Social Skills
4 42 (8.47%) Banking
5 40 (8.06%) Retail
6 30 (6.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 25 (5.04%) Marketing
7 25 (5.04%) Public Sector
8 17 (3.43%) Financial Institution
9 12 (2.42%) Games
10 11 (2.22%) Legal
10 11 (2.22%) Manufacturing
11 8 (1.61%) Advertising
12 7 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.21%) Automotive
13 6 (1.21%) Law
13 6 (1.21%) Wearables
14 5 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (1.01%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (10.28%) PyTorch
2 41 (8.27%) TensorFlow
3 27 (5.44%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.84%) Hugging Face
5 20 (4.03%) Pandas
6 14 (2.82%) SpaCy
7 11 (2.22%) XGBoost
8 10 (2.02%) NumPy
9 8 (1.61%) PySpark
10 7 (1.41%) LangChain
11 5 (1.01%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (0.81%) Seaborn
13 3 (0.60%) EDI
13 3 (0.60%) Streamlit
14 2 (0.40%) Google JAX
14 2 (0.40%) JAX
14 2 (0.40%) LightGBM
14 2 (0.40%) Matplotlib
14 2 (0.40%) Plotly
14 2 (0.40%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 27 (5.44%) Algorithms
2 14 (2.82%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.61%) Credit Risk
4 7 (1.41%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.41%) Data Structures
5 6 (1.21%) Cloud Native
5 6 (1.21%) Hedge funds
6 4 (0.81%) Life Science
6 4 (0.81%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.81%) Social Media
7 3 (0.60%) Clustering
7 3 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.60%) FMCG
7 3 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (0.60%) Pricing Data
8 2 (0.40%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.40%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.40%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.40%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.40%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.60%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 489 (98.59%) Data Science
2 249 (50.20%) Machine Learning
3 186 (37.50%) AI
4 150 (30.24%) Analytics
5 74 (14.92%) Actionable Insight
6 73 (14.72%) MLOps
7 71 (14.31%) Mentoring
8 68 (13.71%) Statistics
9 61 (12.30%) Decision-Making
10 58 (11.69%) Roadmaps
11 53 (10.69%) Generative AI
12 51 (10.28%) Visualisation
13 48 (9.68%) LLM
13 48 (9.68%) Mathematics
14 47 (9.48%) Deep Learning
15 43 (8.67%) Natural Language Processing
16 39 (7.86%) CI/CD
17 38 (7.66%) Software Engineering
18 37 (7.46%) Predictive Modelling
19 35 (7.06%) Feature Engineering
Programming Languages
1 205 (41.33%) Python
2 116 (23.39%) SQL
3 33 (6.65%) R
4 6 (1.21%) Julia
5 4 (0.81%) C
5 4 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.81%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.60%) C++
7 2 (0.40%) Bash
7 2 (0.40%) Java
7 2 (0.40%) VBA
8 1 (0.20%) C#
Qualifications
1 73 (14.72%) Degree
2 35 (7.06%) Security Cleared
3 24 (4.84%) DV Cleared
3 24 (4.84%) Master's Degree
3 24 (4.84%) PhD
4 16 (3.23%) DBS Check
5 5 (1.01%) SC Cleared
6 3 (0.60%) ACCA
6 3 (0.60%) CIMA
6 3 (0.60%) CISSP
6 3 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (0.60%) Numerate Degree
7 2 (0.40%) Azure Certification
7 2 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (0.40%) GIAC
7 2 (0.40%) SANS
8 1 (0.20%) CEH
8 1 (0.20%) CISM
8 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.44%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.01%) GDPR
3 4 (0.81%) EU AI Act
3 4 (0.81%) QA
System Software
1 17 (3.43%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (2.82%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.81%) Terraform
3 3 (0.60%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.40%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.40%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 22 (4.44%) Databricks
2 12 (2.42%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.22%) Google
4 6 (1.21%) ServiceNow
5 3 (0.60%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.40%) Revolut
6 2 (0.40%) SYSPRO
7 1 (0.20%) Civica
7 1 (0.20%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.20%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.20%) Northgate
7 1 (0.20%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.20%) Orchard