Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 25 September 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 537 476
Rank change year-on-year +206 -61 +30
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 632 145 325
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.29% 0.42%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.58% 0.33% 0.44%
Number of salaries quoted 394 84 137
10th Percentile £52,000 £42,500 £38,620
25th Percentile £62,500 £52,500 £49,396
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £71,250 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +12.28% +13.31% +0.61%
75th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £105,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £55,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +36.36% -4.35% -8.00%

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 109,088 44,314 73,256
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.07% 89.71% 95.27%
Number of salaries quoted 74,631 25,938 43,073
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £40,641 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £74,258 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 +198 585 £80,000 +10.34% 708
UK excluding London +110 336 £75,000 +36.36% 264
London +105 269 £90,000 +12.50% 462
Work from Home +76 162 £70,000 - 296
North of England +29 115 £80,000 +45.45% 70
Midlands +18 69 £67,500 -3.05% 48
North West +21 66 £75,000 +36.36% 39
South East +7 65 £80,000 +88.24% 50
East Midlands +27 64 £60,000 -25.00% 22
South West -31 52 £72,500 +3.57% 37
Yorkshire +1 37 £84,387 +53.43% 26
Wales - 14 £75,000 - 17
North East -59 12 £80,000 +53.85% 5
East of England -15 9 £60,000 +2.13% 25
Northern Ireland -82 8 £72,500 +81.25% 9
West Midlands -43 5 £75,000 +26.58% 26
Scotland +9 4 £75,013 +66.70% 13

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

For the 6 months to 25 September 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.

1 630 (99.68%) Data Science
2 338 (53.48%) Machine Learning
3 260 (41.14%) AI
4 234 (37.03%) Python
5 188 (29.75%) Analytics
6 121 (19.15%) SQL
7 95 (15.03%) MLOps
8 84 (13.29%) Actionable Insight
9 82 (12.97%) Generative AI
10 81 (12.82%) Degree
11 78 (12.34%) Natural Language Processing
12 77 (12.18%) Statistics
13 76 (12.03%) Mentoring
14 75 (11.87%) Azure
15 67 (10.60%) AWS
16 63 (9.97%) Predictive Modelling
17 62 (9.81%) CI/CD
17 62 (9.81%) LLM
18 61 (9.65%) Roadmaps
19 60 (9.49%) Decision-Making
20 56 (8.86%) GCP
21 53 (8.39%) Deep Learning
22 49 (7.75%) Mathematics
22 49 (7.75%) Problem-Solving
23 48 (7.59%) Validation
24 47 (7.44%) Agile
24 47 (7.44%) Feature Engineering
24 47 (7.44%) Software Engineering
25 44 (6.96%) PyTorch
25 44 (6.96%) Security Cleared

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 40 (6.33%) Apache Spark
2 6 (0.95%) Apache
2 6 (0.95%) SAS
3 5 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.47%) Jupyter
5 1 (0.16%) R Markdown
Applications
1 4 (0.63%) Chatbot
2 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) SPSS
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 75 (11.87%) Azure
2 67 (10.60%) AWS
3 56 (8.86%) GCP
4 21 (3.32%) SaaS
5 17 (2.69%) Azure Machine Learning
6 15 (2.37%) Power Platform
7 8 (1.27%) dbt
8 5 (0.79%) Amazon S3
8 5 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
8 5 (0.79%) Serverless
9 4 (0.63%) Amazon SageMaker
9 4 (0.63%) Azure AI
9 4 (0.63%) Azure Databricks
9 4 (0.63%) Snowflake
10 3 (0.47%) Anthropic Claude
10 3 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (0.47%) Cloud Composer
10 3 (0.47%) GitHub
10 3 (0.47%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 2 (0.32%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.47%) 5G
1 3 (0.47%) Broadband
1 3 (0.47%) Software-Defined Radio
2 2 (0.32%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (4.27%) Amazon Redshift
2 15 (2.37%) Power BI
3 13 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (1.58%) Tableau
5 8 (1.27%) Looker
6 7 (1.11%) Data Lake
7 6 (0.95%) Big Data
7 6 (0.95%) Flink
8 5 (0.79%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.63%) BigQuery
9 4 (0.63%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.47%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.47%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.47%) Redis
11 2 (0.32%) Amazon Athena
11 2 (0.32%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
12 1 (0.16%) MongoDB
12 1 (0.16%) Neo4j
12 1 (0.16%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (5.22%) Git
2 10 (1.58%) MLflow
3 2 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.16%) Claude Code
4 1 (0.16%) JIRA
General
1 138 (21.84%) Finance
2 65 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
2 65 (10.28%) Banking
3 59 (9.34%) Social Skills
4 39 (6.17%) Retail
5 36 (5.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 30 (4.75%) Marketing
7 27 (4.27%) Financial Institution
8 24 (3.80%) Public Sector
9 20 (3.16%) Games
10 15 (2.37%) Legal
11 13 (2.06%) Law
12 11 (1.74%) Advertising
13 7 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (1.11%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.95%) Telecoms
14 6 (0.95%) Wearables
15 5 (0.79%) Automotive
15 5 (0.79%) Manufacturing
15 5 (0.79%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (6.96%) PyTorch
2 39 (6.17%) TensorFlow
3 26 (4.11%) Pandas
4 25 (3.96%) scikit-learn
5 24 (3.80%) Hugging Face
5 24 (3.80%) SpaCy
6 16 (2.53%) NumPy
7 11 (1.74%) LangChain
8 10 (1.58%) PySpark
9 9 (1.42%) XGBoost
10 7 (1.11%) Terraform
11 6 (0.95%) LangGraph
11 6 (0.95%) SciPy
12 5 (0.79%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.79%) Streamlit
13 4 (0.63%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.47%) Apache Beam
14 3 (0.47%) Kafka
14 3 (0.47%) Plotly
15 2 (0.32%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 37 (5.85%) Algorithms
2 24 (3.80%) e-Learning
3 15 (2.37%) AI Agents
4 10 (1.58%) Credit Risk
5 9 (1.42%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.11%) Hedge funds
6 7 (1.11%) Social Media
7 6 (0.95%) Life Science
8 5 (0.79%) Pricing Data
9 4 (0.63%) Data Structures
9 4 (0.63%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.47%) Clustering
10 3 (0.47%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (0.47%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (0.32%) Distributed Computing
11 2 (0.32%) FMCG
11 2 (0.32%) Hackathon
11 2 (0.32%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.47%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 630 (99.68%) Data Science
2 338 (53.48%) Machine Learning
3 260 (41.14%) AI
4 188 (29.75%) Analytics
5 95 (15.03%) MLOps
6 84 (13.29%) Actionable Insight
7 82 (12.97%) Generative AI
8 78 (12.34%) Natural Language Processing
9 77 (12.18%) Statistics
10 76 (12.03%) Mentoring
11 63 (9.97%) Predictive Modelling
12 62 (9.81%) CI/CD
12 62 (9.81%) LLM
13 61 (9.65%) Roadmaps
14 60 (9.49%) Decision-Making
15 53 (8.39%) Deep Learning
16 49 (7.75%) Mathematics
16 49 (7.75%) Problem-Solving
17 48 (7.59%) Validation
18 47 (7.44%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 234 (37.03%) Python
2 121 (19.15%) SQL
3 19 (3.01%) R
4 6 (0.95%) Java
5 5 (0.79%) Scala
6 4 (0.63%) C
7 3 (0.47%) C++
7 3 (0.47%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.32%) Bash
8 2 (0.32%) VBA
9 1 (0.16%) C#
9 1 (0.16%) Gremlin
9 1 (0.16%) Julia
9 1 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 81 (12.82%) Degree
2 44 (6.96%) Security Cleared
3 40 (6.33%) Master's Degree
4 30 (4.75%) PhD
5 29 (4.59%) DV Cleared
6 7 (1.11%) SC Cleared
7 5 (0.79%) DBS Check
8 4 (0.63%) Numerate Degree
9 3 (0.47%) CISSP
9 3 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.32%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.32%) GIAC
10 2 (0.32%) SANS
11 1 (0.16%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.16%) CEH
11 1 (0.16%) CISM
11 1 (0.16%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (4.43%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (0.79%) EU AI Act
2 5 (0.79%) GDPR
3 3 (0.47%) QA
4 2 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 19 (3.01%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (2.53%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.32%) Computer Incident Response Team
3 1 (0.16%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 41 (6.49%) Databricks
2 19 (3.01%) Google
3 17 (2.69%) Microsoft
4 13 (2.06%) Workday
5 12 (1.90%) LexisNexis
6 6 (0.95%) OpenAI
7 3 (0.47%) New Relic
7 3 (0.47%) Oracle
7 3 (0.47%) PeopleSoft
7 3 (0.47%) Revolut
7 3 (0.47%) Salesforce
7 3 (0.47%) Splunk
8 2 (0.32%) SYSPRO
9 1 (0.16%) Cognizant
9 1 (0.16%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.16%) Mistral
9 1 (0.16%) SAP