Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £70,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 28 May 2026.

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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 436 449
Rank change year-on-year +77 +13 +100
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 440 222 512
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.52% 0.51%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.51% 0.58% 0.54%
Number of salaries quoted 287 94 250
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £42,375
25th Percentile £56,554 £51,938 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £88,750 £80,938 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £93,875 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £60,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +2.36% -7.69% +18.18%

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 87,062 38,144 94,198
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.41% 89.31% 94.71%
Number of salaries quoted 57,930 21,418 69,018
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.96% +2.00% -6.54%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 +96 416 £70,000 +9.38% 140
UK excluding London +36 230 £61,418 +2.36% 75
London +65 189 £80,000 -3.03% 94
Work from Home +48 150 £65,000 -0.62% 59
North of England +8 71 £75,000 +44.23% 15
Midlands +16 66 £66,720 +48.27% 14
North West +35 57 £75,000 +66.67% 14
South West -62 51 £60,000 -15.49% 11
East Midlands +21 50 £70,000 +75.36% 10
South East -11 21 £40,000 -33.33% 31
West Midlands -32 16 £60,860 +23.57% 4
East of England -16 14 £86,725 +66.78% 2
Yorkshire -48 8 £70,860 +10.72% 1
North East -39 6 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
Scotland -11 2 - - 1
Wales -38 2 £40,000 -52.94% 2

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

For the 6 months to 28 May 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.

1 428 (97.27%) Data Science
2 211 (47.95%) Machine Learning
3 183 (41.59%) Python
4 160 (36.36%) AI
5 125 (28.41%) Analytics
6 94 (21.36%) SQL
7 67 (15.23%) Degree
8 63 (14.32%) Actionable Insight
9 58 (13.18%) Statistics
10 54 (12.27%) Visualisation
11 50 (11.36%) Decision-Making
12 49 (11.14%) Mentoring
13 47 (10.68%) Security Cleared
14 46 (10.45%) Azure
15 42 (9.55%) PyTorch
16 41 (9.32%) AWS
16 41 (9.32%) Mathematics
16 41 (9.32%) MLOps
17 39 (8.86%) LLM
18 37 (8.41%) Power BI
18 37 (8.41%) Power Platform
18 37 (8.41%) Predictive Modelling
18 37 (8.41%) R
19 36 (8.18%) Business Intelligence
19 36 (8.18%) Data Visualisation
19 36 (8.18%) Roadmaps
20 35 (7.95%) Deep Learning
20 35 (7.95%) Problem-Solving
21 33 (7.50%) Data Analysis
21 33 (7.50%) DV 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 12 (2.73%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.36%) SAS
3 2 (0.45%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.91%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.45%) SPSS
4 1 (0.23%) Trello
Business Applications
1 8 (1.82%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 46 (10.45%) Azure
2 41 (9.32%) AWS
3 37 (8.41%) Power Platform
4 26 (5.91%) GCP
5 10 (2.27%) dbt
5 10 (2.27%) SaaS
6 8 (1.82%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (1.36%) Dataform
8 4 (0.91%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.91%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.91%) Serverless
8 4 (0.91%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.68%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.68%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.45%) Azure Data Factory
10 2 (0.45%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (0.45%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.36%) Broadband
2 5 (1.14%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.68%) 5G
4 2 (0.45%) Firewall
5 1 (0.23%) LTE
5 1 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.23%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (8.41%) Power BI
2 20 (4.55%) Tableau
3 9 (2.05%) Amazon Redshift
4 8 (1.82%) Looker
4 8 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 7 (1.59%) Big Data
5 7 (1.59%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.36%) Metabase
7 3 (0.68%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.68%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.68%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.45%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.45%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.45%) GIS
8 2 (0.45%) QGIS
8 2 (0.45%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.23%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.23%) Data Lake
9 1 (0.23%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.23%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 13 (2.95%) Git
2 8 (1.82%) MLflow
3 1 (0.23%) JIRA
3 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 84 (19.09%) Finance
2 68 (15.45%) Analytical Skills
3 48 (10.91%) Social Skills
4 46 (10.45%) Retail
5 31 (7.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 27 (6.14%) Marketing
7 24 (5.45%) Banking
8 20 (4.55%) Public Sector
9 12 (2.73%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.27%) Games
11 9 (2.05%) Legal
11 9 (2.05%) Publishing
12 8 (1.82%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.36%) Automotive
13 6 (1.36%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (1.14%) Law
14 5 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.91%) Advertising
15 4 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
15 4 (0.91%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (9.55%) PyTorch
2 33 (7.50%) TensorFlow
3 20 (4.55%) scikit-learn
4 17 (3.86%) Hugging Face
5 15 (3.41%) Pandas
6 9 (2.05%) EDI
7 8 (1.82%) SpaCy
8 7 (1.59%) PySpark
8 7 (1.59%) XGBoost
9 6 (1.36%) NumPy
10 5 (1.14%) LangChain
11 4 (0.91%) Google JAX
11 4 (0.91%) JAX
12 3 (0.68%) LlamaIndex
12 3 (0.68%) Streamlit
13 2 (0.45%) LightGBM
13 2 (0.45%) Plotly
13 2 (0.45%) SciPy
13 2 (0.45%) Seaborn
14 1 (0.23%) Keras
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.00%) Algorithms
2 13 (2.95%) Data Structures
3 8 (1.82%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.82%) FMCG
3 8 (1.82%) Greenfield Project
4 6 (1.36%) Product Ownership
5 4 (0.91%) AI Agents
5 4 (0.91%) Cloud Native
5 4 (0.91%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.68%) Clustering
6 3 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
6 3 (0.68%) Social Media
7 2 (0.45%) Contract for Difference
7 2 (0.45%) Hedge funds
7 2 (0.45%) Insider Threat
7 2 (0.45%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.23%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.23%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.23%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.23%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.68%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 428 (97.27%) Data Science
2 211 (47.95%) Machine Learning
3 160 (36.36%) AI
4 125 (28.41%) Analytics
5 63 (14.32%) Actionable Insight
6 58 (13.18%) Statistics
7 54 (12.27%) Visualisation
8 50 (11.36%) Decision-Making
9 49 (11.14%) Mentoring
10 41 (9.32%) Mathematics
10 41 (9.32%) MLOps
11 39 (8.86%) LLM
12 37 (8.41%) Predictive Modelling
13 36 (8.18%) Business Intelligence
13 36 (8.18%) Data Visualisation
13 36 (8.18%) Roadmaps
14 35 (7.95%) Deep Learning
14 35 (7.95%) Problem-Solving
15 33 (7.50%) Data Analysis
16 32 (7.27%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 183 (41.59%) Python
2 94 (21.36%) SQL
3 37 (8.41%) R
4 6 (1.36%) Julia
5 4 (0.91%) C
5 4 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.91%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.45%) Bash
6 2 (0.45%) C++
7 1 (0.23%) C#
7 1 (0.23%) VBA
Qualifications
1 67 (15.23%) Degree
2 47 (10.68%) Security Cleared
3 33 (7.50%) DV Cleared
4 27 (6.14%) PhD
5 17 (3.86%) DBS Check
6 14 (3.18%) SC Cleared
7 13 (2.95%) Master's Degree
8 8 (1.82%) ACCA
8 8 (1.82%) CIMA
9 3 (0.68%) CISSP
9 3 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.68%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.45%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.45%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.45%) GIAC
10 2 (0.45%) SANS
11 1 (0.23%) CEH
11 1 (0.23%) CISM
11 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.86%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.91%) QA
3 1 (0.23%) GDPR
System Software
1 13 (2.95%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.27%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.68%) Kubeflow
3 2 (0.45%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 2 (0.45%) Computer Incident Response Team
3 2 (0.45%) Terraform
Vendors
1 17 (3.86%) Databricks
2 11 (2.50%) Google
2 11 (2.50%) Microsoft
3 8 (1.82%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.36%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.23%) Civica
5 1 (0.23%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.23%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.23%) Northgate
5 1 (0.23%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.23%) Orchard