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 7 August 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 354 485 565
Rank change year-on-year +131 +80 -28
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 573 200 275
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.40% 0.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.58% 0.45% 0.35%
Number of salaries quoted 373 92 148
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £60,000 £51,563 £50,090
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £70,000 £64,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +9.38% +2.40%
75th Percentile £92,500 £88,125 £82,188
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £111,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £57,125 £60,000
% change year-on-year +31.29% -4.79% -2.04%

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 98,814 44,648 79,271
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.12% 90.01% 94.96%
Number of salaries quoted 67,613 26,525 53,451
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,750 £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 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £49,600 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.85% -0.80% -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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +145 530 £75,000 +11.11% 409
UK excluding London +101 317 £75,000 +31.29% 155
London +99 232 £80,000 +4.92% 267
Work from Home +35 170 £70,000 +7.69% 147
North of England +35 105 £75,000 +36.36% 41
Midlands +34 82 £60,000 - 18
North West +45 70 £75,000 +39.53% 21
East Midlands +36 67 £60,000 +0.07% 8
South West -51 60 £60,000 -29.41% 22
South East +1 32 £60,000 +41.18% 46
Yorkshire -4 23 £75,026 +26.09% 19
West Midlands -26 15 £66,720 +11.20% 10
Wales -47 14 £75,000 -11.76% 1
East of England -18 13 £75,863 +59.71% 17
North East -41 12 £80,000 +53.85% 1
Northern Ireland - 7 £55,000 - 4
Scotland +12 4 £75,013 +7.16% 6

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

For the 6 months to 7 August 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.

1 571 (99.65%) Data Science
2 301 (52.53%) Machine Learning
3 240 (41.88%) AI
4 229 (39.97%) Python
5 184 (32.11%) Analytics
6 122 (21.29%) SQL
7 85 (14.83%) Degree
8 80 (13.96%) Actionable Insight
8 80 (13.96%) MLOps
9 79 (13.79%) Statistics
10 77 (13.44%) Mentoring
11 70 (12.22%) AWS
11 70 (12.22%) Generative AI
12 66 (11.52%) Azure
12 66 (11.52%) Decision-Making
13 63 (10.99%) Natural Language Processing
14 62 (10.82%) LLM
14 62 (10.82%) Mathematics
15 57 (9.95%) Roadmaps
16 55 (9.60%) Deep Learning
17 53 (9.25%) CI/CD
18 52 (9.08%) PyTorch
18 52 (9.08%) Security Cleared
19 49 (8.55%) GCP
20 48 (8.38%) Visualisation
21 47 (8.20%) Predictive Modelling
22 45 (7.85%) Agile
23 44 (7.68%) Feature Engineering
23 44 (7.68%) Software Engineering
23 44 (7.68%) Validation

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 28 (4.89%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.05%) SAS
3 3 (0.52%) Jupyter
4 2 (0.35%) Apache
4 2 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.17%) R Markdown
Applications
1 6 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.70%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.35%) SPSS
4 1 (0.17%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 70 (12.22%) AWS
2 66 (11.52%) Azure
3 49 (8.55%) GCP
4 26 (4.54%) Power Platform
5 18 (3.14%) SaaS
6 13 (2.27%) Azure Machine Learning
7 10 (1.75%) dbt
8 6 (1.05%) Dataform
8 6 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (0.87%) Amazon S3
9 5 (0.87%) Amazon SageMaker
9 5 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.87%) Serverless
9 5 (0.87%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.70%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.52%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.52%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (0.35%) GitHub
12 2 (0.35%) Salesforce Service Cloud
12 2 (0.35%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.87%) Broadband
2 4 (0.70%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.52%) 5G
4 2 (0.35%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (4.54%) Power BI
2 19 (3.32%) Amazon Redshift
3 17 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 16 (2.79%) Tableau
5 10 (1.75%) Looker
6 7 (1.22%) Data Lake
7 6 (1.05%) Big Data
7 6 (1.05%) Metabase
8 5 (0.87%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.70%) Delta Lake
10 3 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
10 3 (0.52%) Apache Iceberg
10 3 (0.52%) Flink
10 3 (0.52%) Redis
10 3 (0.52%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.35%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 2 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.35%) NoSQL
12 1 (0.17%) BigQuery
12 1 (0.17%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 26 (4.54%) Git
2 13 (2.27%) MLflow
3 2 (0.35%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.17%) JIRA
General
1 131 (22.86%) Finance
2 72 (12.57%) Analytical Skills
3 54 (9.42%) Banking
4 50 (8.73%) Social Skills
5 40 (6.98%) Retail
6 36 (6.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 34 (5.93%) Public Sector
8 28 (4.89%) Marketing
9 20 (3.49%) Financial Institution
10 18 (3.14%) Games
11 15 (2.62%) Legal
12 13 (2.27%) Law
13 11 (1.92%) Advertising
14 10 (1.75%) Manufacturing
15 9 (1.57%) Pharmaceutical
16 6 (1.05%) Automotive
16 6 (1.05%) Wearables
17 5 (0.87%) Publishing
17 5 (0.87%) Retail Banking
17 5 (0.87%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (9.08%) PyTorch
2 43 (7.50%) TensorFlow
3 32 (5.58%) scikit-learn
4 28 (4.89%) Pandas
5 24 (4.19%) Hugging Face
6 17 (2.97%) SpaCy
7 16 (2.79%) NumPy
8 13 (2.27%) XGBoost
9 10 (1.75%) LangChain
10 8 (1.40%) PySpark
11 6 (1.05%) SciPy
12 5 (0.87%) LlamaIndex
12 5 (0.87%) Streamlit
13 4 (0.70%) LangGraph
13 4 (0.70%) Seaborn
14 3 (0.52%) Kafka
15 2 (0.35%) Flash
15 2 (0.35%) Flask
15 2 (0.35%) Matplotlib
15 2 (0.35%) Plotly
Miscellaneous
1 35 (6.11%) Algorithms
2 17 (2.97%) e-Learning
3 12 (2.09%) AI Agents
4 9 (1.57%) Cloud Native
4 9 (1.57%) Credit Risk
5 7 (1.22%) Hedge funds
5 7 (1.22%) Social Media
6 6 (1.05%) Life Science
7 5 (0.87%) Pricing Data
8 4 (0.70%) Data Structures
9 3 (0.52%) Clustering
9 3 (0.52%) Cyber Threat
9 3 (0.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (0.52%) Legacy Systems
10 2 (0.35%) Distributed Computing
10 2 (0.35%) FMCG
10 2 (0.35%) Hackathon
10 2 (0.35%) Insider Threat
10 2 (0.35%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.17%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.52%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 571 (99.65%) Data Science
2 301 (52.53%) Machine Learning
3 240 (41.88%) AI
4 184 (32.11%) Analytics
5 80 (13.96%) Actionable Insight
5 80 (13.96%) MLOps
6 79 (13.79%) Statistics
7 77 (13.44%) Mentoring
8 70 (12.22%) Generative AI
9 66 (11.52%) Decision-Making
10 63 (10.99%) Natural Language Processing
11 62 (10.82%) LLM
11 62 (10.82%) Mathematics
12 57 (9.95%) Roadmaps
13 55 (9.60%) Deep Learning
14 53 (9.25%) CI/CD
15 48 (8.38%) Visualisation
16 47 (8.20%) Predictive Modelling
17 45 (7.85%) Agile
18 44 (7.68%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 229 (39.97%) Python
2 122 (21.29%) SQL
3 30 (5.24%) R
4 6 (1.05%) Julia
5 4 (0.70%) C
5 4 (0.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.70%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.52%) C++
6 3 (0.52%) Java
7 2 (0.35%) Bash
7 2 (0.35%) VBA
8 1 (0.17%) C#
8 1 (0.17%) LookML
8 1 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 85 (14.83%) Degree
2 52 (9.08%) Security Cleared
3 38 (6.63%) DV Cleared
4 30 (5.24%) Master's Degree
5 28 (4.89%) PhD
6 15 (2.62%) DBS Check
7 7 (1.22%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.52%) CISSP
9 3 (0.52%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.35%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.35%) GIAC
10 2 (0.35%) SANS
11 1 (0.17%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.17%) CEH
11 1 (0.17%) CISM
11 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.24%) Data Quality
2 6 (1.05%) GDPR
3 5 (0.87%) EU AI Act
4 4 (0.70%) Actionable Recommendations
4 4 (0.70%) QA
5 2 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 19 (3.32%) Docker
Systems Management
1 16 (2.79%) Kubernetes
2 6 (1.05%) Terraform
3 3 (0.52%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.35%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 33 (5.76%) Databricks
2 15 (2.62%) Google
3 13 (2.27%) Microsoft
4 6 (1.05%) LexisNexis
4 6 (1.05%) ServiceNow
5 5 (0.87%) Workday
6 4 (0.70%) OpenAI
7 3 (0.52%) Revolut
8 2 (0.35%) Oracle
8 2 (0.35%) PeopleSoft
8 2 (0.35%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.35%) SYSPRO
9 1 (0.17%) Civica
9 1 (0.17%) Cognizant
9 1 (0.17%) Dataiku
9 1 (0.17%) Northgate
9 1 (0.17%) Orchard