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 2 July 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 477 476
Rank change year-on-year +125 -1 +76
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 492 209 477
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.45% 0.45%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.50% 0.48%
Number of salaries quoted 323 101 225
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £59,617 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +7.69% -
75th Percentile £89,074 £85,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £66,720 £64,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +4.25% +6.67% -

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 90,943 42,123 100,042
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.12% 89.80% 94.74%
Number of salaries quoted 62,442 24,434 72,102
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £56,745 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% +8.09% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £51,356 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.71% - -5.66%

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 2 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 2 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 +126 465 £75,000 +13.96% 190
UK excluding London +78 273 £66,720 +4.25% 88
London +86 199 £80,000 +1.59% 126
Work from Home +35 160 £66,720 -7.32% 72
North of England +23 92 £75,000 +36.36% 18
Midlands +35 81 £65,000 +15.30% 8
North West +54 70 £75,000 +42.86% 14
East Midlands +42 68 £67,500 +12.58% 6
South West -63 52 £60,000 -16.66% 13
South East -11 23 £40,000 -23.81% 35
East of England -5 14 £80,000 +53.85% 5
West Midlands -26 13 £55,000 -2.44% 2
Yorkshire -32 12 £79,000 +23.44% 1
North East -42 10 £80,000 +53.85% 3
Wales -39 6 £82,500 -2.94% 6
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
Scotland +6 2 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 2 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.

1 482 (97.97%) Data Science
2 242 (49.19%) Machine Learning
3 205 (41.67%) Python
4 179 (36.38%) AI
5 140 (28.46%) Analytics
6 110 (22.36%) SQL
7 75 (15.24%) Actionable Insight
8 74 (15.04%) Degree
9 70 (14.23%) Statistics
10 68 (13.82%) Mentoring
11 67 (13.62%) MLOps
12 57 (11.59%) Decision-Making
13 56 (11.38%) Azure
13 56 (11.38%) Roadmaps
14 53 (10.77%) Visualisation
15 51 (10.37%) AWS
15 51 (10.37%) PyTorch
16 47 (9.55%) Generative AI
16 47 (9.55%) Mathematics
17 46 (9.35%) Deep Learning
17 46 (9.35%) LLM
18 40 (8.13%) TensorFlow
19 38 (7.72%) Security Cleared
19 38 (7.72%) Software Engineering
20 36 (7.32%) GCP
21 34 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
21 34 (6.91%) CI/CD
21 34 (6.91%) Problem-Solving
21 34 (6.91%) R
22 33 (6.71%) Natural Language Processing

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 17 (3.46%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.22%) SAS
3 2 (0.41%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.41%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 6 (1.22%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 56 (11.38%) Azure
2 51 (10.37%) AWS
3 36 (7.32%) GCP
4 32 (6.50%) Power Platform
5 13 (2.64%) SaaS
6 10 (2.03%) dbt
7 9 (1.83%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (1.22%) Dataform
9 5 (1.02%) Amazon SageMaker
9 5 (1.02%) Dynamics 365
10 4 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (0.81%) Serverless
10 4 (0.81%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.61%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.61%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (0.61%) Snowflake
12 2 (0.41%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.02%) Broadband
1 5 (1.02%) Software-Defined Radio
2 3 (0.61%) 5G
3 2 (0.41%) Firewall
4 1 (0.20%) LTE
4 1 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (6.50%) Power BI
2 20 (4.07%) Tableau
3 13 (2.64%) Amazon Redshift
4 10 (2.03%) Looker
5 7 (1.42%) Big Data
5 7 (1.42%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.22%) Metabase
7 3 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.61%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.61%) NoSQL
7 3 (0.61%) SQL Server
8 2 (0.41%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.41%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.41%) GIS
8 2 (0.41%) QGIS
8 2 (0.41%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 18 (3.66%) Git
2 8 (1.63%) MLflow
3 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 103 (20.93%) Finance
2 74 (15.04%) Analytical Skills
3 56 (11.38%) Social Skills
4 46 (9.35%) Retail
5 35 (7.11%) Banking
6 32 (6.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (5.28%) Marketing
8 24 (4.88%) Public Sector
9 15 (3.05%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.03%) Games
10 10 (2.03%) Manufacturing
11 9 (1.83%) Legal
12 8 (1.63%) Publishing
13 6 (1.22%) Automotive
13 6 (1.22%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.22%) Wearables
14 5 (1.02%) Advertising
14 5 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (1.02%) Law
14 5 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (10.37%) PyTorch
2 40 (8.13%) TensorFlow
3 24 (4.88%) Hugging Face
4 22 (4.47%) scikit-learn
5 16 (3.25%) Pandas
6 12 (2.44%) SpaCy
7 8 (1.63%) PySpark
8 7 (1.42%) EDI
8 7 (1.42%) NumPy
8 7 (1.42%) XGBoost
9 6 (1.22%) LangChain
10 4 (0.81%) Google JAX
10 4 (0.81%) JAX
10 4 (0.81%) LlamaIndex
11 3 (0.61%) SciPy
11 3 (0.61%) Seaborn
11 3 (0.61%) Streamlit
12 2 (0.41%) LightGBM
12 2 (0.41%) Plotly
13 1 (0.20%) Statsmodels
Miscellaneous
1 26 (5.28%) Algorithms
2 12 (2.44%) e-Learning
3 10 (2.03%) Data Structures
4 6 (1.22%) AI Agents
4 6 (1.22%) FMCG
4 6 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
4 6 (1.22%) Product Ownership
5 5 (1.02%) Cloud Native
5 5 (1.02%) Hedge funds
6 4 (0.81%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.61%) Clustering
7 3 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.61%) Life Science
7 3 (0.61%) Social Media
8 2 (0.41%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.41%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.41%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.41%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.41%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.20%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.61%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 482 (97.97%) Data Science
2 242 (49.19%) Machine Learning
3 179 (36.38%) AI
4 140 (28.46%) Analytics
5 75 (15.24%) Actionable Insight
6 70 (14.23%) Statistics
7 68 (13.82%) Mentoring
8 67 (13.62%) MLOps
9 57 (11.59%) Decision-Making
10 56 (11.38%) Roadmaps
11 53 (10.77%) Visualisation
12 47 (9.55%) Generative AI
12 47 (9.55%) Mathematics
13 46 (9.35%) Deep Learning
13 46 (9.35%) LLM
14 38 (7.72%) Software Engineering
15 34 (6.91%) Business Intelligence
15 34 (6.91%) CI/CD
15 34 (6.91%) Problem-Solving
16 33 (6.71%) Predictive Modelling
Programming Languages
1 205 (41.67%) Python
2 110 (22.36%) SQL
3 34 (6.91%) R
4 6 (1.22%) Julia
5 4 (0.81%) C
5 4 (0.81%) C++
5 4 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.81%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.41%) Bash
6 2 (0.41%) Java
6 2 (0.41%) VBA
7 1 (0.20%) C#
Qualifications
1 74 (15.04%) Degree
2 38 (7.72%) Security Cleared
3 26 (5.28%) PhD
4 25 (5.08%) DV Cleared
5 20 (4.07%) Master's Degree
6 16 (3.25%) DBS Check
7 11 (2.24%) SC Cleared
8 6 (1.22%) ACCA
8 6 (1.22%) CIMA
9 3 (0.61%) CISSP
9 3 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.41%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.41%) GIAC
10 2 (0.41%) SANS
11 1 (0.20%) CEH
11 1 (0.20%) CISM
11 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (4.47%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.81%) QA
3 1 (0.20%) GDPR
System Software
1 15 (3.05%) Docker
Systems Management
1 12 (2.44%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.61%) Kubeflow
2 3 (0.61%) Terraform
3 2 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 2 (0.41%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 21 (4.27%) Databricks
2 13 (2.64%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.24%) Google
4 6 (1.22%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.22%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.20%) Civica
5 1 (0.20%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.20%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.20%) Northgate
5 1 (0.20%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.20%) Orchard
5 1 (0.20%) SYSPRO