Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £66,720 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 14 March 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 460 422 420
Rank change year-on-year -38 -2 +109
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 239 264 478
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.32% 0.61% 0.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.35% 0.67% 0.60%
Number of salaries quoted 173 110 241
10th Percentile £46,250 £37,785 £45,000
25th Percentile £55,000 £49,375 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £66,720 £60,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.20% -14.29% +7.69%
75th Percentile £82,198 £76,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £91,250 £106,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% -10.77% +9.99%

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 68,062 39,531 79,680
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.83% 90.64% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 43,433 22,967 61,167
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,869 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,750 £43,750 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,934
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,793 £50,000
% change year-on-year -8.75% +9.59% -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 14 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 16 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 14 March 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 -38 226 £65,000 +8.33% 143
London +51 121 £75,000 +0.67% 88
UK excluding London -76 112 £60,000 +3.45% 85
Work from Home -11 73 £60,000 - 47
North of England -60 29 £61,418 +11.67% 14
South West -61 27 £60,000 -16.66% 12
Midlands -24 25 £55,000 +22.22% 13
North West -14 21 £61,418 +11.67% 10
South East -10 16 £40,000 -32.20% 36
West Midlands -9 14 £55,000 +22.22% 3
East Midlands -22 11 £62,500 +7.76% 10
East of England +10 7 £93,363 +60.97% 6
Scotland -23 5 £100,000 +42.86% 1
Yorkshire -50 5 £62,500 -2.34% 2
North East -21 3 £62,500 +56.78% 2
Northern Ireland -27 3 - - 1

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

For the 6 months to 14 March 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.

1 227 (94.98%) Data Science
2 108 (45.19%) Python
3 107 (44.77%) Machine Learning
4 103 (43.10%) AI
5 84 (35.15%) Analytics
6 59 (24.69%) SQL
7 54 (22.59%) Degree
8 52 (21.76%) Decision-Making
8 52 (21.76%) Visualisation
9 38 (15.90%) Power BI
9 38 (15.90%) Power Platform
10 37 (15.48%) Business Intelligence
10 37 (15.48%) Security Cleared
11 34 (14.23%) Predictive Modelling
12 32 (13.39%) Mathematics
12 32 (13.39%) Problem-Solving
13 31 (12.97%) DV Cleared
14 29 (12.13%) Azure
15 28 (11.72%) Actionable Insight
16 27 (11.30%) Data Visualisation
16 27 (11.30%) R
17 26 (10.88%) PhD
18 25 (10.46%) LLM
19 24 (10.04%) Storytelling
20 23 (9.62%) Data Analysis
20 23 (9.62%) Statistics
21 21 (8.79%) Data Modelling
21 21 (8.79%) Generative AI
21 21 (8.79%) Tableau
22 20 (8.37%) AWS

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 5 (2.09%) Apache Spark
2 2 (0.84%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 10 (4.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 38 (15.90%) Power Platform
2 29 (12.13%) Azure
3 20 (8.37%) AWS
4 10 (4.18%) Snowflake
5 9 (3.77%) dbt
6 6 (2.51%) GCP
7 4 (1.67%) Azure Machine Learning
7 4 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
7 4 (1.67%) Smartsheet
8 3 (1.26%) Dagster
9 2 (0.84%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (0.84%) Dataform
10 1 (0.42%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.42%) Amazon SageMaker
10 1 (0.42%) AWS Lambda
10 1 (0.42%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.42%) Google Analytics
10 1 (0.42%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.42%) SaaS
10 1 (0.42%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.67%) Broadband
2 1 (0.42%) Internet
2 1 (0.42%) LTE
2 1 (0.42%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (15.90%) Power BI
2 21 (8.79%) Tableau
3 8 (3.35%) SQL Server
4 7 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (2.09%) Big Data
6 3 (1.26%) Amazon Redshift
6 3 (1.26%) QGIS
7 2 (0.84%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.84%) GIS
7 2 (0.84%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.84%) Looker
7 2 (0.84%) Metabase
7 2 (0.84%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.84%) Spatial Data
8 1 (0.42%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.42%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.42%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.42%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (3.35%) Git
1 8 (3.35%) MLflow
General
1 43 (17.99%) Social Skills
2 38 (15.90%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (12.13%) Finance
4 25 (10.46%) Retail
5 18 (7.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 17 (7.11%) Marketing
7 13 (5.44%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.18%) Publishing
9 7 (2.93%) Law
10 6 (2.51%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.26%) Financial Institution
12 3 (1.26%) Games
12 3 (1.26%) Legal
12 3 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.84%) Banking
13 2 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.84%) Social Housing
14 1 (0.42%) Advertising
14 1 (0.42%) Aerospace
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (7.95%) PyTorch
2 18 (7.53%) TensorFlow
3 10 (4.18%) scikit-learn
4 9 (3.77%) EDI
5 5 (2.09%) XGBoost
6 4 (1.67%) Google JAX
6 4 (1.67%) JAX
7 3 (1.26%) LangChain
7 3 (1.26%) PySpark
8 2 (0.84%) Kafka
8 2 (0.84%) NetworkX
8 2 (0.84%) NumPy
8 2 (0.84%) Pandas
8 2 (0.84%) SpaCy
8 2 (0.84%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.42%) FastAPI
9 1 (0.42%) GeoPandas
9 1 (0.42%) Hugging Face
9 1 (0.42%) MapLibre
9 1 (0.42%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 13 (5.44%) Algorithms
2 11 (4.60%) Data Structures
3 10 (4.18%) FMCG
3 10 (4.18%) Greenfield Project
4 5 (2.09%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.26%) Fixed Income
6 2 (0.84%) AI Agents
6 2 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (0.84%) Contract for Difference
6 2 (0.84%) Educational Technology
6 2 (0.84%) e-Learning
7 1 (0.42%) Cloud Native
7 1 (0.42%) Credit Risk
7 1 (0.42%) FPGA
7 1 (0.42%) Genomics
7 1 (0.42%) Life Science
7 1 (0.42%) Omics
7 1 (0.42%) Reinsurance
7 1 (0.42%) Social Network
7 1 (0.42%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.42%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 227 (94.98%) Data Science
2 107 (44.77%) Machine Learning
3 103 (43.10%) AI
4 84 (35.15%) Analytics
5 52 (21.76%) Decision-Making
5 52 (21.76%) Visualisation
6 37 (15.48%) Business Intelligence
7 34 (14.23%) Predictive Modelling
8 32 (13.39%) Mathematics
8 32 (13.39%) Problem-Solving
9 28 (11.72%) Actionable Insight
10 27 (11.30%) Data Visualisation
11 25 (10.46%) LLM
12 24 (10.04%) Storytelling
13 23 (9.62%) Data Analysis
13 23 (9.62%) Statistics
14 21 (8.79%) Data Modelling
14 21 (8.79%) Generative AI
15 19 (7.95%) Business Strategy
15 19 (7.95%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 108 (45.19%) Python
2 59 (24.69%) SQL
3 27 (11.30%) R
4 4 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 4 (1.67%) T-SQL
5 2 (0.84%) Julia
6 1 (0.42%) C++
6 1 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 54 (22.59%) Degree
2 37 (15.48%) Security Cleared
3 31 (12.97%) DV Cleared
4 26 (10.88%) PhD
5 12 (5.02%) DBS Check
6 10 (4.18%) ACCA
6 10 (4.18%) CIMA
6 10 (4.18%) SC Cleared
7 7 (2.93%) Master's Degree
8 3 (1.26%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.42%) Computer Science Degree
10 1 (0.42%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.18%) Data Quality
2 3 (1.26%) GDPR
3 1 (0.42%) Accessibility
3 1 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.42%) ISO 13485
3 1 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 4 (1.67%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.26%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.42%) Argo
2 1 (0.42%) Kubeflow
2 1 (0.42%) Terraform
Vendors
1 12 (5.02%) Microsoft
2 11 (4.60%) Salesforce
3 9 (3.77%) Databricks
4 6 (2.51%) ServiceNow
5 2 (0.84%) Civica
5 2 (0.84%) Google
5 2 (0.84%) Northgate
5 2 (0.84%) Orchard
6 1 (0.42%) Cognos
6 1 (0.42%) Facebook
6 1 (0.42%) Mapbox
6 1 (0.42%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.42%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud