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 31 July 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 482 541
Rank change year-on-year +125 +59 +23
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 541 199 295
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.53% 0.40% 0.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.56% 0.45% 0.36%
Number of salaries quoted 350 94 167
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £41,820
25th Percentile £60,000 £51,188 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +11.32% +0.61%
75th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £84,375
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £110,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £55,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +27.27% -8.33% -4.00%

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 96,998 44,483 82,509
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.27% 90.02% 94.82%
Number of salaries quoted 66,411 26,428 56,723
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 31 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 31 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 +142 506 £75,000 +9.09% 206
UK excluding London +93 297 £70,000 +27.27% 88
London +89 222 £80,000 - 138
Work from Home +41 169 £66,720 +3.44% 93
North of England +51 100 £75,000 +36.36% 21
Midlands +29 84 £65,000 +9.01% 14
North West +56 69 £75,000 +39.53% 10
East Midlands +41 69 £62,500 +4.24% 2
South West -54 57 £60,000 -29.41% 12
South East -18 25 £60,000 +41.18% 22
Yorkshire -18 19 £75,013 +26.07% 11
West Midlands -16 15 £66,720 +11.90% 12
East of England -10 13 £75,863 +59.71% 7
North East -38 12 £80,000 +53.85%
Wales -48 11 £75,000 -11.76% 4
Northern Ireland - 4 £55,000 - 3
Scotland +4 3 £75,026 +7.18% 5

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

For the 6 months to 31 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.

1 538 (99.45%) Data Science
2 284 (52.50%) Machine Learning
3 223 (41.22%) Python
4 220 (40.67%) AI
5 174 (32.16%) Analytics
6 122 (22.55%) SQL
7 81 (14.97%) Degree
8 80 (14.79%) Actionable Insight
9 79 (14.60%) MLOps
10 76 (14.05%) Mentoring
11 71 (13.12%) Statistics
12 65 (12.01%) AWS
13 64 (11.83%) Azure
13 64 (11.83%) Decision-Making
14 61 (11.28%) Generative AI
15 58 (10.72%) Mathematics
16 57 (10.54%) Roadmaps
17 56 (10.35%) Natural Language Processing
18 55 (10.17%) LLM
19 52 (9.61%) Deep Learning
20 50 (9.24%) Visualisation
21 49 (9.06%) PyTorch
22 48 (8.87%) CI/CD
22 48 (8.87%) GCP
23 46 (8.50%) Security Cleared
24 45 (8.32%) Predictive Modelling
25 42 (7.76%) Agile
25 42 (7.76%) Feature Engineering
26 41 (7.58%) Software Engineering
26 41 (7.58%) TensorFlow

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 27 (4.99%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.11%) SAS
3 3 (0.55%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.18%) R Markdown
Applications
1 6 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.74%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.37%) SPSS
4 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 1 (0.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 65 (12.01%) AWS
2 64 (11.83%) Azure
3 48 (8.87%) GCP
4 28 (5.18%) Power Platform
5 16 (2.96%) SaaS
6 12 (2.22%) Azure Machine Learning
7 9 (1.66%) dbt
8 6 (1.11%) Dataform
8 6 (1.11%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (1.11%) Snowflake
9 5 (0.92%) Amazon S3
9 5 (0.92%) Amazon SageMaker
9 5 (0.92%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.92%) Serverless
10 4 (0.74%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.55%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.55%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (0.37%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 2 (0.37%) Vertex AI
13 1 (0.18%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.92%) Broadband
2 4 (0.74%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.55%) 5G
4 2 (0.37%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.18%) Power BI
2 18 (3.33%) Amazon Redshift
3 17 (3.14%) Tableau
4 16 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.85%) Looker
6 7 (1.29%) Big Data
7 6 (1.11%) Metabase
8 5 (0.92%) Data Lake
8 5 (0.92%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.74%) Delta Lake
10 3 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.55%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.37%) Apache Iceberg
11 2 (0.37%) Flink
11 2 (0.37%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.37%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.37%) Redis
12 1 (0.18%) Hadoop
12 1 (0.18%) MongoDB
12 1 (0.18%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 23 (4.25%) Git
2 13 (2.40%) MLflow
3 2 (0.37%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.18%) JIRA
General
1 126 (23.29%) Finance
2 72 (13.31%) Analytical Skills
3 52 (9.61%) Social Skills
4 50 (9.24%) Banking
5 36 (6.65%) Retail
6 33 (6.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 32 (5.91%) Public Sector
8 28 (5.18%) Marketing
9 19 (3.51%) Financial Institution
10 17 (3.14%) Games
11 15 (2.77%) Legal
12 12 (2.22%) Advertising
13 11 (2.03%) Law
14 10 (1.85%) Manufacturing
15 9 (1.66%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (1.11%) Automotive
16 6 (1.11%) Wearables
17 5 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
17 5 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
17 5 (0.92%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (9.06%) PyTorch
2 41 (7.58%) TensorFlow
3 28 (5.18%) scikit-learn
4 25 (4.62%) Pandas
5 24 (4.44%) Hugging Face
6 16 (2.96%) SpaCy
7 14 (2.59%) NumPy
8 11 (2.03%) XGBoost
9 9 (1.66%) LangChain
10 8 (1.48%) PySpark
11 5 (0.92%) LlamaIndex
11 5 (0.92%) SciPy
12 4 (0.74%) Seaborn
12 4 (0.74%) Streamlit
13 2 (0.37%) Flash
13 2 (0.37%) Google JAX
13 2 (0.37%) Kafka
13 2 (0.37%) LightGBM
13 2 (0.37%) Matplotlib
13 2 (0.37%) Plotly
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.28%) Algorithms
2 16 (2.96%) e-Learning
3 9 (1.66%) AI Agents
3 9 (1.66%) Credit Risk
4 7 (1.29%) Cloud Native
4 7 (1.29%) Hedge funds
4 7 (1.29%) Social Media
5 6 (1.11%) Life Science
6 5 (0.92%) Data Structures
6 5 (0.92%) Pricing Data
7 3 (0.55%) Clustering
7 3 (0.55%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.55%) FMCG
7 3 (0.55%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.37%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.37%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.37%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.18%) Cyber Defence
9 1 (0.18%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.55%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 538 (99.45%) Data Science
2 284 (52.50%) Machine Learning
3 220 (40.67%) AI
4 174 (32.16%) Analytics
5 80 (14.79%) Actionable Insight
6 79 (14.60%) MLOps
7 76 (14.05%) Mentoring
8 71 (13.12%) Statistics
9 64 (11.83%) Decision-Making
10 61 (11.28%) Generative AI
11 58 (10.72%) Mathematics
12 57 (10.54%) Roadmaps
13 56 (10.35%) Natural Language Processing
14 55 (10.17%) LLM
15 52 (9.61%) Deep Learning
16 50 (9.24%) Visualisation
17 48 (8.87%) CI/CD
18 45 (8.32%) Predictive Modelling
19 42 (7.76%) Agile
19 42 (7.76%) Feature Engineering
Programming Languages
1 223 (41.22%) Python
2 122 (22.55%) SQL
3 32 (5.91%) R
4 6 (1.11%) Julia
5 4 (0.74%) C
5 4 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.74%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.55%) C++
7 2 (0.37%) Bash
7 2 (0.37%) Java
7 2 (0.37%) VBA
8 1 (0.18%) C#
8 1 (0.18%) LookML
Qualifications
1 81 (14.97%) Degree
2 46 (8.50%) Security Cleared
3 33 (6.10%) DV Cleared
4 28 (5.18%) Master's Degree
5 27 (4.99%) PhD
6 16 (2.96%) DBS Check
7 7 (1.29%) SC Cleared
8 3 (0.55%) CISSP
8 3 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.37%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.37%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.37%) GIAC
9 2 (0.37%) SANS
10 1 (0.18%) ACCA
10 1 (0.18%) CEH
10 1 (0.18%) CIMA
10 1 (0.18%) CISM
10 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.55%) Data Quality
2 6 (1.11%) GDPR
3 5 (0.92%) EU AI Act
4 4 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
4 4 (0.74%) QA
System Software
1 19 (3.51%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (2.96%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.11%) Terraform
3 3 (0.55%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.37%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.37%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 32 (5.91%) Databricks
2 13 (2.40%) Google
3 10 (1.85%) Microsoft
4 6 (1.11%) ServiceNow
5 4 (0.74%) LexisNexis
5 4 (0.74%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.55%) Revolut
6 3 (0.55%) Salesforce
7 2 (0.37%) Oracle
7 2 (0.37%) PeopleSoft
7 2 (0.37%) SYSPRO
8 1 (0.18%) Civica
8 1 (0.18%) Cognizant
8 1 (0.18%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.18%) Northgate
8 1 (0.18%) Orchard
8 1 (0.18%) Workday