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 23 July 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 488 539
Rank change year-on-year +121 +51 -3
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 507 206 327
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.42% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.54% 0.47% 0.37%
Number of salaries quoted 327 102 192
10th Percentile £49,500 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £50,000
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 £87,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,250 £101,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £62,000 £62,500
% change year-on-year +12.90% -0.80% +4.17%

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 94,649 44,285 87,735
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.33% 90.20% 94.76%
Number of salaries quoted 64,854 26,220 61,542
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year - +1.85% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,082
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% - -5.66%

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 23 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 23 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 +124 476 £75,000 +14.67% 204
UK excluding London +75 280 £70,000 +12.90% 106
London +84 207 £80,000 +1.59% 127
Work from Home +27 158 £66,720 +4.25% 100
North of England +38 93 £75,000 +36.36% 32
Midlands +38 83 £60,000 +0.63% 10
East Midlands +37 70 £62,500 +4.24%
North West +47 65 £75,000 +42.86% 17
South West -55 54 £60,000 -27.27% 17
South East -7 22 £60,000 +12.68% 22
Yorkshire -20 16 £77,000 +20.31% 13
East of England +4 13 £75,863 +45.89% 5
West Midlands -27 13 £55,000 -7.76% 10
North East -42 12 £80,000 +53.85% 2
Wales -42 10 £82,500 -2.94% 7
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 3
Scotland +14 2 - - 10

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 502 (99.01%) Data Science
2 261 (51.48%) Machine Learning
3 212 (41.81%) Python
4 194 (38.26%) AI
5 155 (30.57%) Analytics
6 122 (24.06%) SQL
7 78 (15.38%) Actionable Insight
8 77 (15.19%) MLOps
9 75 (14.79%) Degree
10 72 (14.20%) Mentoring
11 67 (13.21%) Statistics
12 63 (12.43%) Decision-Making
13 61 (12.03%) AWS
14 60 (11.83%) Azure
15 57 (11.24%) Roadmaps
16 53 (10.45%) Generative AI
16 53 (10.45%) Mathematics
17 51 (10.06%) Visualisation
18 50 (9.86%) Deep Learning
18 50 (9.86%) PyTorch
19 49 (9.66%) LLM
20 47 (9.27%) Natural Language Processing
21 45 (8.88%) GCP
22 43 (8.48%) CI/CD
23 42 (8.28%) TensorFlow
24 40 (7.89%) Predictive Modelling
25 39 (7.69%) Agile
25 39 (7.69%) Feature Engineering
25 39 (7.69%) Software Engineering
26 36 (7.10%) 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 23 (4.54%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.18%) SAS
3 2 (0.39%) Jupyter
4 1 (0.20%) Apache
Applications
1 7 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.79%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.39%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.39%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 61 (12.03%) AWS
2 60 (11.83%) Azure
3 45 (8.88%) GCP
4 29 (5.72%) Power Platform
5 15 (2.96%) SaaS
6 11 (2.17%) Azure Machine Learning
7 9 (1.78%) dbt
8 6 (1.18%) Amazon SageMaker
8 6 (1.18%) Dataform
8 6 (1.18%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (0.99%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (0.99%) Serverless
9 5 (0.99%) Snowflake
10 4 (0.79%) Amazon S3
10 4 (0.79%) Smartsheet
11 3 (0.59%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (0.59%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (0.39%) Vertex AI
13 1 (0.20%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.99%) Broadband
2 4 (0.79%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.59%) 5G
4 2 (0.39%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (5.72%) Power BI
2 18 (3.55%) Tableau
3 17 (3.35%) Amazon Redshift
4 14 (2.76%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.97%) Looker
6 7 (1.38%) Big Data
7 6 (1.18%) Metabase
8 4 (0.79%) Data Lake
8 4 (0.79%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (0.59%) Delta Lake
9 3 (0.59%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.39%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.20%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.20%) Flink
11 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
11 1 (0.20%) Redis
11 1 (0.20%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (3.94%) Git
2 10 (1.97%) MLflow
3 2 (0.39%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 113 (22.29%) Finance
2 72 (14.20%) Analytical Skills
3 54 (10.65%) Social Skills
4 44 (8.68%) Banking
5 37 (7.30%) Retail
6 30 (5.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (5.72%) Marketing
8 26 (5.13%) Public Sector
9 18 (3.55%) Financial Institution
10 16 (3.16%) Games
11 15 (2.96%) Legal
12 12 (2.37%) Advertising
13 11 (2.17%) Manufacturing
14 8 (1.58%) Law
14 8 (1.58%) Pharmaceutical
15 6 (1.18%) Automotive
15 6 (1.18%) Wearables
16 5 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
16 5 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
17 4 (0.79%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (9.86%) PyTorch
2 42 (8.28%) TensorFlow
3 27 (5.33%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.73%) Hugging Face
5 22 (4.34%) Pandas
6 15 (2.96%) SpaCy
7 12 (2.37%) NumPy
8 11 (2.17%) XGBoost
9 8 (1.58%) PySpark
10 7 (1.38%) LangChain
11 5 (0.99%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (0.79%) SciPy
12 4 (0.79%) Seaborn
13 3 (0.59%) Streamlit
14 2 (0.39%) Google JAX
14 2 (0.39%) JAX
14 2 (0.39%) LightGBM
14 2 (0.39%) Matplotlib
14 2 (0.39%) Plotly
15 1 (0.20%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.92%) Algorithms
2 15 (2.96%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.58%) Credit Risk
4 7 (1.38%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.38%) Cloud Native
4 7 (1.38%) Hedge funds
4 7 (1.38%) Social Media
5 6 (1.18%) Data Structures
6 5 (0.99%) Life Science
7 4 (0.79%) Pricing Data
8 3 (0.59%) Clustering
8 3 (0.59%) Cyber Threat
8 3 (0.59%) FMCG
8 3 (0.59%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.39%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (0.39%) Greenfield Project
9 2 (0.39%) Insider Threat
9 2 (0.39%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.20%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.20%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.59%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (99.01%) Data Science
2 261 (51.48%) Machine Learning
3 194 (38.26%) AI
4 155 (30.57%) Analytics
5 78 (15.38%) Actionable Insight
6 77 (15.19%) MLOps
7 72 (14.20%) Mentoring
8 67 (13.21%) Statistics
9 63 (12.43%) Decision-Making
10 57 (11.24%) Roadmaps
11 53 (10.45%) Generative AI
11 53 (10.45%) Mathematics
12 51 (10.06%) Visualisation
13 50 (9.86%) Deep Learning
14 49 (9.66%) LLM
15 47 (9.27%) Natural Language Processing
16 43 (8.48%) CI/CD
17 40 (7.89%) Predictive Modelling
18 39 (7.69%) Agile
18 39 (7.69%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 212 (41.81%) Python
2 122 (24.06%) SQL
3 34 (6.71%) R
4 6 (1.18%) Julia
5 4 (0.79%) C
5 4 (0.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.79%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.59%) C++
7 2 (0.39%) Bash
7 2 (0.39%) Java
7 2 (0.39%) VBA
8 1 (0.20%) C#
8 1 (0.20%) LookML
Qualifications
1 75 (14.79%) Degree
2 35 (6.90%) Security Cleared
3 25 (4.93%) Master's Degree
4 24 (4.73%) DV Cleared
5 23 (4.54%) PhD
6 16 (3.16%) DBS Check
7 5 (0.99%) SC Cleared
8 3 (0.59%) CISSP
8 3 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.59%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.39%) ACCA
9 2 (0.39%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.39%) CIMA
9 2 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.39%) GIAC
9 2 (0.39%) SANS
10 1 (0.20%) CEH
10 1 (0.20%) CISM
10 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (5.52%) Data Quality
2 5 (0.99%) GDPR
3 4 (0.79%) EU AI Act
3 4 (0.79%) QA
4 2 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 18 (3.55%) Docker
Systems Management
1 15 (2.96%) Kubernetes
2 5 (0.99%) Terraform
3 3 (0.59%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.39%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.39%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 26 (5.13%) Databricks
2 11 (2.17%) Google
2 11 (2.17%) Microsoft
3 6 (1.18%) ServiceNow
4 3 (0.59%) Revolut
4 3 (0.59%) Salesforce
5 2 (0.39%) OpenAI
5 2 (0.39%) SYSPRO
6 1 (0.20%) Civica
6 1 (0.20%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.20%) Dataiku
6 1 (0.20%) LexisNexis
6 1 (0.20%) Northgate
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle
6 1 (0.20%) Orchard
6 1 (0.20%) PeopleSoft