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 21 May 2026.

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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 441 443
Rank change year-on-year +66 +2 +97
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 424 235 513
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.54% 0.53%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.49% 0.60% 0.56%
Number of salaries quoted 280 107 250
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £51,250 £51,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% -7.14% +7.69%
75th Percentile £88,125 £84,375 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £94,250 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £58,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year +3.45% -10.77% +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 86,124 39,293 92,007
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.36% 89.47% 94.64%
Number of salaries quoted 56,991 22,669 67,426
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £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 £71,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £51,729 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.34% +3.46% -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 21 May 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 21 May 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 +92 401 £70,000 +9.38% 152
UK excluding London +17 216 £60,000 +3.45% 83
London +74 188 £80,000 -5.88% 101
Work from Home +58 138 £65,000 +0.78% 70
North of England +10 69 £75,000 +44.23% 13
North West +45 56 £75,000 +66.67% 11
Midlands +7 55 £66,720 +48.27% 16
South West -64 49 £60,000 -16.66% 18
East Midlands +16 39 £70,000 +20.69% 10
South East -12 22 £40,000 -33.33% 29
West Midlands -44 16 £60,860 +35.24% 6
East of England -2 14 £86,725 +49.53% 2
Yorkshire -39 7 £66,720 +4.25% 2
North East -34 6 £80,000 +53.85%
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 2
Scotland -14 2 - - 1
Wales -30 2 £40,000 -52.94% 3

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

For the 6 months to 21 May 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.

1 411 (96.93%) Data Science
2 196 (46.23%) Machine Learning
3 169 (39.86%) Python
4 151 (35.61%) AI
5 119 (28.07%) Analytics
6 84 (19.81%) SQL
7 67 (15.80%) Degree
8 53 (12.50%) Visualisation
9 51 (12.03%) Actionable Insight
10 49 (11.56%) Decision-Making
11 47 (11.08%) Security Cleared
11 47 (11.08%) Statistics
12 44 (10.38%) Azure
13 43 (10.14%) Mathematics
13 43 (10.14%) Mentoring
14 40 (9.43%) Power BI
14 40 (9.43%) Power Platform
15 39 (9.20%) AWS
16 38 (8.96%) Business Intelligence
16 38 (8.96%) LLM
16 38 (8.96%) MLOps
17 37 (8.73%) PyTorch
18 36 (8.49%) Data Visualisation
18 36 (8.49%) R
19 35 (8.25%) Predictive Modelling
20 33 (7.78%) DV Cleared
21 31 (7.31%) Problem-Solving
22 29 (6.84%) Data Analysis
23 28 (6.60%) Generative AI
23 28 (6.60%) PhD

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 12 (2.83%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.18%) SAS
3 2 (0.47%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
Applications
1 6 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.94%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.47%) SPSS
4 1 (0.24%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (2.12%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 44 (10.38%) Azure
2 40 (9.43%) Power Platform
3 39 (9.20%) AWS
4 23 (5.42%) GCP
5 10 (2.36%) dbt
5 10 (2.36%) SaaS
6 7 (1.65%) Azure Machine Learning
7 6 (1.42%) Dataform
8 4 (0.94%) Amazon SageMaker
8 4 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.94%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.94%) Serverless
8 4 (0.94%) Smartsheet
8 4 (0.94%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.71%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.47%) Azure Data Factory
10 2 (0.47%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.42%) Broadband
2 5 (1.18%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.71%) 5G
4 2 (0.47%) Firewall
5 1 (0.24%) Internet
5 1 (0.24%) LTE
5 1 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.24%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (9.43%) Power BI
2 23 (5.42%) Tableau
3 8 (1.89%) Amazon Redshift
3 8 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
3 8 (1.89%) Looker
3 8 (1.89%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.42%) Big Data
4 6 (1.42%) Metabase
5 4 (0.94%) Data Mining
6 3 (0.71%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.71%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.47%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.47%) Geospatial Data
7 2 (0.47%) GIS
7 2 (0.47%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.47%) QGIS
7 2 (0.47%) Spatial Data
8 1 (0.24%) Data Lake
8 1 (0.24%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 12 (2.83%) Git
2 7 (1.65%) MLflow
3 1 (0.24%) JIRA
3 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 71 (16.75%) Finance
2 63 (14.86%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (11.79%) Social Skills
4 47 (11.08%) Retail
5 31 (7.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 27 (6.37%) Marketing
7 20 (4.72%) Public Sector
8 17 (4.01%) Banking
9 11 (2.59%) Games
10 10 (2.36%) Publishing
11 9 (2.12%) Legal
12 8 (1.89%) Financial Institution
12 8 (1.89%) Manufacturing
13 6 (1.42%) Automotive
13 6 (1.42%) Law
13 6 (1.42%) Pharmaceutical
14 4 (0.94%) Advertising
14 4 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
15 3 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
15 3 (0.71%) Wearables
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (8.73%) PyTorch
2 27 (6.37%) TensorFlow
3 20 (4.72%) scikit-learn
4 15 (3.54%) Pandas
5 12 (2.83%) Hugging Face
6 9 (2.12%) EDI
7 7 (1.65%) PySpark
7 7 (1.65%) SpaCy
7 7 (1.65%) XGBoost
8 6 (1.42%) NumPy
9 5 (1.18%) LangChain
10 4 (0.94%) Google JAX
10 4 (0.94%) JAX
11 3 (0.71%) LlamaIndex
11 3 (0.71%) Streamlit
12 2 (0.47%) Plotly
12 2 (0.47%) Seaborn
13 1 (0.24%) Kaldi
13 1 (0.24%) Keras
13 1 (0.24%) NetworkX
Miscellaneous
1 21 (4.95%) Algorithms
2 12 (2.83%) Data Structures
3 9 (2.12%) FMCG
3 9 (2.12%) Greenfield Project
4 7 (1.65%) e-Learning
5 6 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.94%) AI Agents
6 4 (0.94%) Cloud Native
7 3 (0.71%) Clustering
7 3 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
7 3 (0.71%) Social Media
8 2 (0.47%) Contract for Difference
8 2 (0.47%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.47%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.47%) Insider Threat
8 2 (0.47%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.24%) Distributed Computing
9 1 (0.24%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.24%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.24%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.71%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 411 (96.93%) Data Science
2 196 (46.23%) Machine Learning
3 151 (35.61%) AI
4 119 (28.07%) Analytics
5 53 (12.50%) Visualisation
6 51 (12.03%) Actionable Insight
7 49 (11.56%) Decision-Making
8 47 (11.08%) Statistics
9 43 (10.14%) Mathematics
9 43 (10.14%) Mentoring
10 38 (8.96%) Business Intelligence
10 38 (8.96%) LLM
10 38 (8.96%) MLOps
11 36 (8.49%) Data Visualisation
12 35 (8.25%) Predictive Modelling
13 31 (7.31%) Problem-Solving
14 29 (6.84%) Data Analysis
15 28 (6.60%) Generative AI
16 26 (6.13%) Software Engineering
16 26 (6.13%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 169 (39.86%) Python
2 84 (19.81%) SQL
3 36 (8.49%) R
4 6 (1.42%) Julia
5 4 (0.94%) C
5 4 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.94%) T-SQL
6 2 (0.47%) Bash
6 2 (0.47%) C++
7 1 (0.24%) C#
7 1 (0.24%) VBA
Qualifications
1 67 (15.80%) Degree
2 47 (11.08%) Security Cleared
3 33 (7.78%) DV Cleared
4 28 (6.60%) PhD
5 19 (4.48%) DBS Check
6 14 (3.30%) SC Cleared
7 13 (3.07%) Master's Degree
8 9 (2.12%) ACCA
8 9 (2.12%) CIMA
9 3 (0.71%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.71%) CISSP
9 3 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.47%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.47%) GIAC
10 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.47%) SANS
11 1 (0.24%) CEH
11 1 (0.24%) CISM
11 1 (0.24%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (4.48%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.94%) QA
3 2 (0.47%) GDPR
System Software
1 12 (2.83%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.36%) Kubernetes
2 2 (0.47%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
2 2 (0.47%) Computer Incident Response Team
2 2 (0.47%) Kubeflow
2 2 (0.47%) Terraform
Vendors
1 18 (4.25%) Databricks
2 12 (2.83%) Google
2 12 (2.83%) Microsoft
3 9 (2.12%) Salesforce
4 6 (1.42%) ServiceNow
5 2 (0.47%) Civica
5 2 (0.47%) Northgate
5 2 (0.47%) Orchard
6 1 (0.24%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.24%) OpenAI