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 4 June 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 460 449
Rank change year-on-year +102 -11 +89
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 454 215 505
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.49% 0.49% 0.49%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.52% 0.55% 0.52%
Number of salaries quoted 289 98 243
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £41,250
25th Percentile £56,554 £51,375 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,405 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.03% -6.56% +7.69%
75th Percentile £85,000 £84,688 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,750 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £57,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +6.81% -11.54% +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 86,819 39,086 97,392
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.71% 89.49% 94.81%
Number of salaries quoted 58,219 21,927 70,884
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,250 £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 £50,550 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.09% +1.10% -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 4 June 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 4 June 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 +123 430 £70,000 +7.69% 191
UK excluding London +51 242 £61,418 +6.81% 94
London +81 191 £80,000 -3.03% 121
Work from Home +58 159 £65,000 -1.23% 95
Midlands +20 77 £66,720 +35.47% 13
North of England +8 71 £75,000 +43.54% 24
East Midlands +33 61 £70,000 +16.75% 10
North West +45 57 £75,000 +66.67% 18
South West -53 53 £60,000 -15.49% 14
South East -14 20 £40,000 -28.89% 31
West Midlands -32 16 £60,860 +23.57% 3
East of England -13 14 £86,725 +66.78% 3
Yorkshire -41 8 £70,860 +10.72% 6
North East -31 6 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 5
Scotland 0 2 - - 2
Wales -36 2 £40,000 -52.94% 2

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

For the 6 months to 4 June 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.

1 443 (97.58%) Data Science
2 223 (49.12%) Machine Learning
3 196 (43.17%) Python
4 165 (36.34%) AI
5 128 (28.19%) Analytics
6 99 (21.81%) SQL
7 73 (16.08%) Actionable Insight
8 69 (15.20%) Degree
9 67 (14.76%) Statistics
10 55 (12.11%) Mentoring
11 54 (11.89%) Visualisation
12 53 (11.67%) Decision-Making
13 49 (10.79%) Azure
14 48 (10.57%) Roadmaps
15 47 (10.35%) PyTorch
15 47 (10.35%) Security Cleared
16 46 (10.13%) Deep Learning
17 44 (9.69%) MLOps
18 43 (9.47%) AWS
19 41 (9.03%) Mathematics
20 39 (8.59%) LLM
21 38 (8.37%) TensorFlow
22 37 (8.15%) R
22 37 (8.15%) Software Engineering
23 36 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
23 36 (7.93%) Predictive Modelling
24 35 (7.71%) Data Visualisation
24 35 (7.71%) Generative AI
24 35 (7.71%) Power BI
24 35 (7.71%) Power Platform

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 14 (3.08%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.32%) SAS
3 2 (0.44%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.44%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.88%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.44%) SPSS
4 1 (0.22%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.54%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 49 (10.79%) Azure
2 43 (9.47%) AWS
3 35 (7.71%) Power Platform
4 28 (6.17%) GCP
5 10 (2.20%) dbt
5 10 (2.20%) SaaS
6 9 (1.98%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (1.32%) Dataform
8 4 (0.88%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (0.88%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.88%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.88%) Serverless
8 4 (0.88%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.66%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.66%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.66%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.66%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.44%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.32%) Broadband
2 5 (1.10%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.66%) 5G
4 2 (0.44%) Firewall
5 1 (0.22%) LTE
5 1 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.22%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (7.71%) Power BI
2 20 (4.41%) Tableau
3 10 (2.20%) Amazon Redshift
4 9 (1.98%) Looker
5 8 (1.76%) Big Data
6 7 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (1.54%) SQL Server
7 6 (1.32%) Metabase
8 3 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (0.66%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.66%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.44%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.44%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.44%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.44%) GIS
9 2 (0.44%) QGIS
9 2 (0.44%) Spatial Data
10 1 (0.22%) BigQuery
10 1 (0.22%) Hadoop
10 1 (0.22%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 16 (3.52%) Git
2 8 (1.76%) MLflow
3 2 (0.44%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.22%) JIRA
General
1 92 (20.26%) Finance
2 67 (14.76%) Analytical Skills
3 48 (10.57%) Social Skills
4 45 (9.91%) Retail
5 33 (7.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 30 (6.61%) Banking
7 26 (5.73%) Marketing
8 20 (4.41%) Public Sector
9 13 (2.86%) Financial Institution
10 10 (2.20%) Games
11 9 (1.98%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.76%) Legal
12 8 (1.76%) Publishing
13 6 (1.32%) Automotive
13 6 (1.32%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (1.10%) Law
14 5 (1.10%) Wearables
15 4 (0.88%) Advertising
15 4 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (10.35%) PyTorch
2 38 (8.37%) TensorFlow
3 22 (4.85%) Hugging Face
4 21 (4.63%) scikit-learn
5 16 (3.52%) Pandas
6 9 (1.98%) EDI
6 9 (1.98%) SpaCy
7 8 (1.76%) PySpark
8 7 (1.54%) NumPy
8 7 (1.54%) XGBoost
9 5 (1.10%) LangChain
10 4 (0.88%) Google JAX
10 4 (0.88%) JAX
11 3 (0.66%) LlamaIndex
11 3 (0.66%) SciPy
11 3 (0.66%) Streamlit
12 2 (0.44%) LightGBM
12 2 (0.44%) Plotly
12 2 (0.44%) Seaborn
13 1 (0.22%) Statsmodels
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.51%) Algorithms
2 12 (2.64%) Data Structures
3 9 (1.98%) e-Learning
4 7 (1.54%) FMCG
4 7 (1.54%) Greenfield Project
5 6 (1.32%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.88%) AI Agents
6 4 (0.88%) Cloud Native
7 3 (0.66%) Clustering
7 3 (0.66%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.66%) Social Media
8 2 (0.44%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.44%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (0.44%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.44%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.44%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.44%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.22%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.22%) Educational Technology
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.66%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 443 (97.58%) Data Science
2 223 (49.12%) Machine Learning
3 165 (36.34%) AI
4 128 (28.19%) Analytics
5 73 (16.08%) Actionable Insight
6 67 (14.76%) Statistics
7 55 (12.11%) Mentoring
8 54 (11.89%) Visualisation
9 53 (11.67%) Decision-Making
10 48 (10.57%) Roadmaps
11 46 (10.13%) Deep Learning
12 44 (9.69%) MLOps
13 41 (9.03%) Mathematics
14 39 (8.59%) LLM
15 37 (8.15%) Software Engineering
16 36 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
16 36 (7.93%) Predictive Modelling
17 35 (7.71%) Data Visualisation
17 35 (7.71%) Generative AI
17 35 (7.71%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 196 (43.17%) Python
2 99 (21.81%) SQL
3 37 (8.15%) R
4 6 (1.32%) Julia
5 4 (0.88%) C
5 4 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.88%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.44%) Bash
6 2 (0.44%) C++
6 2 (0.44%) VBA
7 1 (0.22%) C#
Qualifications
1 69 (15.20%) Degree
2 47 (10.35%) Security Cleared
3 33 (7.27%) DV Cleared
4 27 (5.95%) PhD
5 16 (3.52%) DBS Check
5 16 (3.52%) Master's Degree
6 14 (3.08%) SC Cleared
7 7 (1.54%) ACCA
7 7 (1.54%) CIMA
8 3 (0.66%) CISSP
8 3 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.66%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.44%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.44%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.44%) GIAC
9 2 (0.44%) SANS
10 1 (0.22%) CEH
10 1 (0.22%) CISM
10 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.74%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.88%) QA
3 1 (0.22%) GDPR
System Software
1 14 (3.08%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (2.42%) Kubernetes
2 3 (0.66%) Kubeflow
2 3 (0.66%) Terraform
3 2 (0.44%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
3 2 (0.44%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 19 (4.19%) Databricks
2 11 (2.42%) Google
2 11 (2.42%) Microsoft
3 7 (1.54%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.32%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.22%) Civica
5 1 (0.22%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.22%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.22%) Northgate
5 1 (0.22%) OpenAI
5 1 (0.22%) Orchard