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 9 July 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 472 564
Rank change year-on-year +109 +92 -17
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 489 207 351
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.42% 0.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.47% 0.36%
Number of salaries quoted 321 101 224
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £60,000 £51,750 £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 £98,375
UK excluding London median annual salary £66,720 £59,625 £60,000
% change year-on-year +11.90% -0.63% -

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 92,011 43,811 97,193
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.18% 89.90% 94.71%
Number of salaries quoted 63,054 25,783 69,790
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £28,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,000 £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% - -5.66%

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 9 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 9 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 +138 460 £75,000 +15.38% 202
UK excluding London +69 268 £66,720 +11.90% 110
London +94 201 £80,000 - 125
Work from Home +40 155 £66,720 +1.38% 71
North of England +31 91 £75,000 +36.36% 25
Midlands +37 82 £62,500 +10.86% 8
East Midlands +35 69 £65,000 +8.41% 5
North West +48 68 £75,000 +42.86% 17
South West -62 48 £60,000 -25.00% 36
South East -26 20 £50,000 -4.76% 28
East of England -4 14 £80,000 +53.85% 5
West Midlands -22 13 £55,000 -2.44% 3
Yorkshire -28 12 £79,000 +23.44% 5
North East -34 11 £80,000 +53.85% 3
Wales -42 8 £82,500 -2.94% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 2
Scotland 0 2 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 9 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.

1 481 (98.36%) Data Science
2 246 (50.31%) Machine Learning
3 212 (43.35%) Python
4 187 (38.24%) AI
5 146 (29.86%) Analytics
6 115 (23.52%) SQL
7 76 (15.54%) Degree
8 74 (15.13%) Actionable Insight
9 71 (14.52%) MLOps
9 71 (14.52%) Statistics
10 70 (14.31%) Mentoring
11 62 (12.68%) Decision-Making
12 58 (11.86%) Azure
12 58 (11.86%) Roadmaps
13 54 (11.04%) AWS
14 53 (10.84%) PyTorch
14 53 (10.84%) Visualisation
15 50 (10.22%) Generative AI
15 50 (10.22%) LLM
15 50 (10.22%) Mathematics
16 47 (9.61%) Deep Learning
17 42 (8.59%) TensorFlow
18 39 (7.98%) Software Engineering
19 38 (7.77%) GCP
19 38 (7.77%) Natural Language Processing
20 37 (7.57%) CI/CD
21 35 (7.16%) Predictive Modelling
21 35 (7.16%) Problem-Solving
21 35 (7.16%) Security Cleared
22 34 (6.95%) Data Analysis

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 18 (3.68%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.23%) SAS
3 2 (0.41%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.82%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.41%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.82%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 58 (11.86%) Azure
2 54 (11.04%) AWS
3 38 (7.77%) GCP
4 30 (6.13%) Power Platform
5 14 (2.86%) SaaS
6 10 (2.04%) dbt
7 9 (1.84%) Azure Machine Learning
8 6 (1.23%) Amazon SageMaker
8 6 (1.23%) Dataform
8 6 (1.23%) Dynamics 365
9 4 (0.82%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (0.82%) Serverless
9 4 (0.82%) Smartsheet
10 3 (0.61%) Amazon S3
10 3 (0.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
10 3 (0.61%) Snowflake
11 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 30 (6.13%) Power BI
2 18 (3.68%) Tableau
3 14 (2.86%) Amazon Redshift
4 10 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (2.04%) Looker
5 7 (1.43%) Big Data
6 6 (1.23%) Metabase
7 3 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.61%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.61%) NoSQL
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
8 2 (0.41%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 22 (4.50%) Git
2 8 (1.64%) MLflow
3 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 105 (21.47%) Finance
2 72 (14.72%) Analytical Skills
3 59 (12.07%) Social Skills
4 43 (8.79%) Retail
5 39 (7.98%) Banking
6 34 (6.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (5.32%) Marketing
8 24 (4.91%) Public Sector
9 16 (3.27%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.25%) Games
10 11 (2.25%) Manufacturing
11 10 (2.04%) Legal
12 7 (1.43%) Advertising
12 7 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.23%) Automotive
13 6 (1.23%) Publishing
13 6 (1.23%) Wearables
14 5 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (1.02%) Law
14 5 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (10.84%) PyTorch
2 42 (8.59%) TensorFlow
3 25 (5.11%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.91%) Hugging Face
5 19 (3.89%) Pandas
6 13 (2.66%) SpaCy
7 10 (2.04%) NumPy
7 10 (2.04%) XGBoost
8 8 (1.64%) PySpark
9 7 (1.43%) EDI
9 7 (1.43%) LangChain
10 5 (1.02%) LlamaIndex
11 4 (0.82%) Google JAX
11 4 (0.82%) JAX
12 3 (0.61%) SciPy
12 3 (0.61%) Seaborn
12 3 (0.61%) Streamlit
13 2 (0.41%) LightGBM
13 2 (0.41%) Plotly
14 1 (0.20%) Kaldi
Miscellaneous
1 27 (5.52%) Algorithms
2 13 (2.66%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.64%) Data Structures
4 7 (1.43%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.43%) Credit Risk
5 6 (1.23%) Cloud Native
5 6 (1.23%) Hedge funds
5 6 (1.23%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.82%) FMCG
6 4 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
6 4 (0.82%) Life Science
6 4 (0.82%) Social Media
7 3 (0.61%) Clustering
7 3 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
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
1 481 (98.36%) Data Science
2 246 (50.31%) Machine Learning
3 187 (38.24%) AI
4 146 (29.86%) Analytics
5 74 (15.13%) Actionable Insight
6 71 (14.52%) MLOps
6 71 (14.52%) Statistics
7 70 (14.31%) Mentoring
8 62 (12.68%) Decision-Making
9 58 (11.86%) Roadmaps
10 53 (10.84%) Visualisation
11 50 (10.22%) Generative AI
11 50 (10.22%) LLM
11 50 (10.22%) Mathematics
12 47 (9.61%) Deep Learning
13 39 (7.98%) Software Engineering
14 38 (7.77%) Natural Language Processing
15 37 (7.57%) CI/CD
16 35 (7.16%) Predictive Modelling
16 35 (7.16%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 212 (43.35%) Python
2 115 (23.52%) SQL
3 33 (6.75%) R
4 6 (1.23%) Julia
5 4 (0.82%) C
5 4 (0.82%) C++
5 4 (0.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.82%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.41%) Bash
6 2 (0.41%) Java
6 2 (0.41%) VBA
7 1 (0.20%) C#
Qualifications
1 76 (15.54%) Degree
2 35 (7.16%) Security Cleared
3 27 (5.52%) PhD
4 22 (4.50%) DV Cleared
4 22 (4.50%) Master's Degree
5 16 (3.27%) DBS Check
6 7 (1.43%) SC Cleared
7 4 (0.82%) ACCA
7 4 (0.82%) CIMA
8 3 (0.61%) CISSP
8 3 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.41%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.41%) GIAC
9 2 (0.41%) SANS
10 1 (0.20%) CEH
10 1 (0.20%) CISM
10 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.32%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.82%) GDPR
2 4 (0.82%) QA
3 3 (0.61%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 16 (3.27%) Docker
Systems Management
1 13 (2.66%) 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 (4.29%) Databricks
2 15 (3.07%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.25%) Google
4 6 (1.23%) ServiceNow
5 4 (0.82%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.41%) 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
7 1 (0.20%) Revolut