Data Scientist Job Trends

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist salary in the UK is £65,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 January 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 472 461 374
Rank change year-on-year -11 -87 +139
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 184 254 424
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.48% 0.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.51% 0.75%
Number of salaries quoted 119 97 207
10th Percentile £44,839 £37,650 £45,750
25th Percentile £53,750 £51,250 £53,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £60,000 £70,576
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -14.98% +8.58%
75th Percentile £87,500 £73,886 £88,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £88,500 £110,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £57,500 £65,000
% change year-on-year +6.81% -11.54% +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 55,347 49,429 56,262
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 90.79% 92.66% 95.18%
Number of salaries quoted 34,239 25,628 43,493
10th Percentile £28,675 £33,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £76,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -5.66% +6.00% -5.25%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 +27 175 £65,000 +8.33% 121
London +72 107 £78,750 +14.55% 64
UK excluding London -38 74 £61,418 +6.81% 81
Work from Home +31 57 £60,000 - 59
North of England -27 20 £62,500 +13.64% 10
South West +9 17 £60,000 -15.49% 7
North West +5 16 £61,418 +6.81% 8
South East +27 14 £50,000 -13.79% 45
Midlands +1 10 £58,750 +30.56% 4
East of England +25 7 £90,000 +55.17% 10
East Midlands -3 6 £53,945 -6.99% 3
Scotland -15 5 £100,000 - 5
West Midlands +8 4 £70,000 +64.71% 1
North East -2 2 £62,500 +56.78% 1
Yorkshire -33 2 £62,500 -6.37% 1
Northern Ireland -8 1 £40,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 17 January 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.

1 177 (96.20%) Data Science
2 104 (56.52%) Python
3 103 (55.98%) Machine Learning
4 77 (41.85%) AI
5 74 (40.22%) Analytics
6 53 (28.80%) Degree
7 50 (27.17%) SQL
8 44 (23.91%) Visualisation
9 40 (21.74%) Problem-Solving
10 37 (20.11%) PhD
11 34 (18.48%) Azure
11 34 (18.48%) Decision-Making
11 34 (18.48%) Predictive Modelling
12 29 (15.76%) Mathematics
13 28 (15.22%) Power BI
13 28 (15.22%) Power Platform
13 28 (15.22%) Statistics
14 27 (14.67%) AWS
14 27 (14.67%) Business Intelligence
15 26 (14.13%) Master's Degree
15 26 (14.13%) Natural Language Processing
16 24 (13.04%) LLM
16 24 (13.04%) Storytelling
17 22 (11.96%) Security Cleared
18 21 (11.41%) MLOps
19 20 (10.87%) Actionable Insight
20 19 (10.33%) PyTorch
21 18 (9.78%) Data Visualisation
21 18 (9.78%) DevOps
21 18 (9.78%) Generative AI

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 10 (5.43%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 3 (1.63%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 7 (3.80%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 34 (18.48%) Azure
2 28 (15.22%) Power Platform
3 27 (14.67%) AWS
4 15 (8.15%) GCP
5 7 (3.80%) Snowflake
6 6 (3.26%) dbt
7 5 (2.72%) Dagster
8 3 (1.63%) Google Analytics
9 2 (1.09%) Prefect
9 2 (1.09%) SaaS
10 1 (0.54%) Adobe Analytics
10 1 (0.54%) Amazon S3
10 1 (0.54%) Amazon SageMaker
10 1 (0.54%) Azure AI
10 1 (0.54%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.54%) Azure Machine Learning
10 1 (0.54%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.54%) Microsoft 365
10 1 (0.54%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.17%) Broadband
2 1 (0.54%) Internet
2 1 (0.54%) LTE
2 1 (0.54%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.54%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (15.22%) Power BI
2 16 (8.70%) Tableau
3 7 (3.80%) Amazon Redshift
3 7 (3.80%) SQL Server
4 5 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (2.17%) Big Data
6 3 (1.63%) Relational Database
7 2 (1.09%) Data Mining
7 2 (1.09%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.54%) ClickHouse
8 1 (0.54%) Geospatial Data
8 1 (0.54%) Hadoop
8 1 (0.54%) Mixpanel
8 1 (0.54%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.54%) Parquet
8 1 (0.54%) Pinecone
8 1 (0.54%) PostgreSQL
8 1 (0.54%) QGIS
8 1 (0.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 10 (5.43%) Git
2 4 (2.17%) MLflow
General
1 41 (22.28%) Finance
2 40 (21.74%) Social Skills
3 38 (20.65%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (10.87%) Retail
5 19 (10.33%) Marketing
6 9 (4.89%) Banking
6 9 (4.89%) Games
7 8 (4.35%) Financial Institution
7 8 (4.35%) Law
8 7 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (3.80%) Publishing
9 6 (3.26%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (2.72%) Manufacturing
11 4 (2.17%) Legal
11 4 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (2.17%) Public Sector
12 1 (0.54%) Billing
12 1 (0.54%) Digital Economy
12 1 (0.54%) Social Housing
12 1 (0.54%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (10.33%) PyTorch
2 16 (8.70%) TensorFlow
3 14 (7.61%) scikit-learn
4 13 (7.07%) Pandas
5 12 (6.52%) PySpark
6 8 (4.35%) NumPy
7 7 (3.80%) EDI
7 7 (3.80%) SpaCy
8 5 (2.72%) LangChain
8 5 (2.72%) XGBoost
9 4 (2.17%) Google JAX
9 4 (2.17%) JAX
10 3 (1.63%) Kafka
11 2 (1.09%) Hugging Face
11 2 (1.09%) LightGBM
11 2 (1.09%) NetworkX
11 2 (1.09%) pydantic
11 2 (1.09%) Streamlit
12 1 (0.54%) Faiss
12 1 (0.54%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 20 (10.87%) Algorithms
2 8 (4.35%) Data Structures
2 8 (4.35%) Greenfield Project
3 7 (3.80%) e-Learning
3 7 (3.80%) FMCG
4 5 (2.72%) Reinsurance
5 4 (2.17%) Cloud Native
5 4 (2.17%) Life Science
6 3 (1.63%) Fixed Income
6 3 (1.63%) Product Ownership
7 2 (1.09%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (1.09%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.09%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
8 1 (0.54%) Digital Media
8 1 (0.54%) FPGA
8 1 (0.54%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.54%) Social Media
8 1 (0.54%) Social Network
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.54%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (96.20%) Data Science
2 103 (55.98%) Machine Learning
3 77 (41.85%) AI
4 74 (40.22%) Analytics
5 44 (23.91%) Visualisation
6 40 (21.74%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (18.48%) Decision-Making
7 34 (18.48%) Predictive Modelling
8 29 (15.76%) Mathematics
9 28 (15.22%) Statistics
10 27 (14.67%) Business Intelligence
11 26 (14.13%) Natural Language Processing
12 24 (13.04%) LLM
12 24 (13.04%) Storytelling
13 21 (11.41%) MLOps
14 20 (10.87%) Actionable Insight
15 18 (9.78%) Data Visualisation
15 18 (9.78%) DevOps
15 18 (9.78%) Generative AI
15 18 (9.78%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 104 (56.52%) Python
2 50 (27.17%) SQL
3 14 (7.61%) R
4 1 (0.54%) C++
4 1 (0.54%) Scala
Qualifications
1 53 (28.80%) Degree
2 37 (20.11%) PhD
3 26 (14.13%) Master's Degree
4 22 (11.96%) Security Cleared
5 17 (9.24%) DV Cleared
6 10 (5.43%) DBS Check
6 10 (5.43%) SC Cleared
7 7 (3.80%) ACCA
7 7 (3.80%) CIMA
8 3 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.54%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.54%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.98%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.09%) Accessibility
2 2 (1.09%) GDPR
2 2 (1.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
3 1 (0.54%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 12 (6.52%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (1.63%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.54%) Argo
Vendors
1 9 (4.89%) Salesforce
2 8 (4.35%) Databricks
2 8 (4.35%) Microsoft
3 3 (1.63%) Google
4 2 (1.09%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (0.54%) Adobe
5 1 (0.54%) Alteryx
5 1 (0.54%) Amplitude
5 1 (0.54%) Civica
5 1 (0.54%) Cognos
5 1 (0.54%) Facebook
5 1 (0.54%) Foundry
5 1 (0.54%) Mapbox
5 1 (0.54%) Marketo
5 1 (0.54%) Northgate
5 1 (0.54%) Orchard