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 12 July 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 483 552
Rank change year-on-year +120 +69 -11
Permanent jobs requiring a Data Scientist 491 206 354
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.42% 0.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.53% 0.47% 0.37%
Number of salaries quoted 321 102 225
10th Percentile £46,939 £42,500 £40,800
25th Percentile £60,000 £52,500 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £68,750 £62,879
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +9.34% -3.26%
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,250 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £66,720 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +11.20% - -

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 92,938 44,220 95,860
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.19% 89.85% 94.73%
Number of salaries quoted 63,745 26,085 68,515
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,000 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year - +4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £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 12 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 12 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 +135 462 £75,000 +14.67% 167
UK excluding London +73 273 £66,720 +11.20% 79
London +94 198 £80,000 - 109
Work from Home +36 153 £66,720 +2.65% 61
North of England +50 92 £75,000 +36.36% 22
Midlands +37 83 £60,000 +1.27% 5
East Midlands +37 70 £62,500 +4.24% 2
North West +41 69 £75,000 +42.86% 15
South West -58 50 £60,000 -25.00% 12
South East -15 22 £50,000 -4.76% 27
East of England -5 13 £75,863 +45.89% 5
West Midlands -15 13 £55,000 -7.17% 3
Yorkshire -24 12 £79,000 +23.44% 4
North East -45 11 £80,000 +53.85% 3
Wales -39 8 £82,500 -2.94% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 1
Scotland +3 2 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 483 (98.37%) Data Science
2 248 (50.51%) Machine Learning
3 208 (42.36%) Python
4 186 (37.88%) AI
5 147 (29.94%) Analytics
6 116 (23.63%) SQL
7 75 (15.27%) Degree
8 74 (15.07%) Actionable Insight
9 72 (14.66%) MLOps
10 70 (14.26%) Mentoring
10 70 (14.26%) Statistics
11 61 (12.42%) Decision-Making
12 58 (11.81%) Azure
12 58 (11.81%) Roadmaps
13 56 (11.41%) AWS
14 52 (10.59%) Generative AI
14 52 (10.59%) PyTorch
14 52 (10.59%) Visualisation
15 49 (9.98%) LLM
15 49 (9.98%) Mathematics
16 47 (9.57%) Deep Learning
17 42 (8.55%) TensorFlow
18 40 (8.15%) GCP
18 40 (8.15%) Natural Language Processing
19 39 (7.94%) Software Engineering
20 38 (7.74%) CI/CD
21 36 (7.33%) Security Cleared
22 35 (7.13%) Predictive Modelling
23 34 (6.92%) Feature Engineering
24 33 (6.72%) Agile

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 18 (3.67%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.22%) SAS
3 2 (0.41%) ArcGIS
3 2 (0.41%) Jupyter
Applications
1 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.41%) SPSS
4 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.81%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 58 (11.81%) Azure
2 56 (11.41%) AWS
3 40 (8.15%) GCP
4 30 (6.11%) Power Platform
5 14 (2.85%) SaaS
6 10 (2.04%) Azure Machine Learning
6 10 (2.04%) dbt
7 6 (1.22%) Amazon SageMaker
7 6 (1.22%) Dataform
7 6 (1.22%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (0.81%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (0.81%) Serverless
8 4 (0.81%) Smartsheet
9 3 (0.61%) Amazon S3
9 3 (0.61%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (0.61%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.61%) Snowflake
10 2 (0.41%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.02%) Broadband
2 4 (0.81%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.61%) 5G
4 2 (0.41%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (6.11%) Power BI
2 19 (3.87%) Tableau
3 14 (2.85%) Amazon Redshift
4 10 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 10 (2.04%) Looker
5 7 (1.43%) Big Data
6 6 (1.22%) Metabase
7 3 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
7 3 (0.61%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.61%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.41%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.41%) Delta Lake
8 2 (0.41%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.41%) GIS
8 2 (0.41%) QGIS
8 2 (0.41%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.20%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.20%) Hadoop
9 1 (0.20%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 21 (4.28%) Git
2 8 (1.63%) MLflow
3 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
4 1 (0.20%) JIRA
General
1 106 (21.59%) Finance
2 72 (14.66%) Analytical Skills
3 58 (11.81%) Social Skills
4 42 (8.55%) Retail
5 39 (7.94%) Banking
6 32 (6.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (5.30%) Marketing
8 25 (5.09%) Public Sector
9 16 (3.26%) Financial Institution
10 11 (2.24%) Games
10 11 (2.24%) Manufacturing
11 10 (2.04%) Legal
12 7 (1.43%) Advertising
12 7 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (1.22%) Automotive
13 6 (1.22%) Law
13 6 (1.22%) Publishing
13 6 (1.22%) Wearables
14 5 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (10.59%) PyTorch
2 42 (8.55%) TensorFlow
3 26 (5.30%) scikit-learn
4 24 (4.89%) Hugging Face
5 19 (3.87%) Pandas
6 13 (2.65%) SpaCy
7 10 (2.04%) XGBoost
8 9 (1.83%) NumPy
9 8 (1.63%) PySpark
10 7 (1.43%) LangChain
11 5 (1.02%) EDI
11 5 (1.02%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (0.81%) Seaborn
13 3 (0.61%) Google JAX
13 3 (0.61%) JAX
13 3 (0.61%) Streamlit
14 2 (0.41%) LightGBM
14 2 (0.41%) Matplotlib
14 2 (0.41%) Plotly
14 2 (0.41%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 27 (5.50%) Algorithms
2 13 (2.65%) e-Learning
3 8 (1.63%) Data Structures
4 7 (1.43%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.43%) Credit Risk
5 6 (1.22%) Cloud Native
5 6 (1.22%) Hedge funds
6 5 (1.02%) Product Ownership
7 4 (0.81%) FMCG
7 4 (0.81%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (0.81%) Life Science
7 4 (0.81%) Social Media
8 3 (0.61%) Clustering
8 3 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
9 2 (0.41%) Contract for Difference
9 2 (0.41%) Distributed Computing
9 2 (0.41%) Insider Threat
9 2 (0.41%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.41%) Self-Motivation
10 1 (0.20%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.61%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 483 (98.37%) Data Science
2 248 (50.51%) Machine Learning
3 186 (37.88%) AI
4 147 (29.94%) Analytics
5 74 (15.07%) Actionable Insight
6 72 (14.66%) MLOps
7 70 (14.26%) Mentoring
7 70 (14.26%) Statistics
8 61 (12.42%) Decision-Making
9 58 (11.81%) Roadmaps
10 52 (10.59%) Generative AI
10 52 (10.59%) Visualisation
11 49 (9.98%) LLM
11 49 (9.98%) Mathematics
12 47 (9.57%) Deep Learning
13 40 (8.15%) Natural Language Processing
14 39 (7.94%) Software Engineering
15 38 (7.74%) CI/CD
16 35 (7.13%) Predictive Modelling
17 34 (6.92%) Feature Engineering
Programming Languages
1 208 (42.36%) Python
2 116 (23.63%) SQL
3 33 (6.72%) R
4 6 (1.22%) Julia
5 4 (0.81%) C
5 4 (0.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (0.81%) T-SQL
6 3 (0.61%) C++
7 2 (0.41%) Bash
7 2 (0.41%) Java
7 2 (0.41%) VBA
8 1 (0.20%) C#
Qualifications
1 75 (15.27%) Degree
2 36 (7.33%) Security Cleared
3 25 (5.09%) PhD
4 24 (4.89%) DV Cleared
5 23 (4.68%) Master's Degree
6 16 (3.26%) DBS Check
7 6 (1.22%) SC Cleared
8 4 (0.81%) ACCA
8 4 (0.81%) CIMA
9 3 (0.61%) CISSP
9 3 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (0.61%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.41%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
10 2 (0.41%) GIAC
10 2 (0.41%) SANS
11 1 (0.20%) CEH
11 1 (0.20%) CISM
11 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.30%) Data Quality
2 4 (0.81%) GDPR
2 4 (0.81%) QA
3 3 (0.61%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 17 (3.46%) Docker
Systems Management
1 14 (2.85%) Kubernetes
2 4 (0.81%) Terraform
3 3 (0.61%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.41%) Computer Incident Response Team
Vendors
1 22 (4.48%) Databricks
2 13 (2.65%) Microsoft
3 11 (2.24%) Google
4 6 (1.22%) ServiceNow
5 4 (0.81%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.41%) SYSPRO
7 1 (0.20%) Civica
7 1 (0.20%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.20%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.20%) Northgate
7 1 (0.20%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.20%) Orchard
7 1 (0.20%) Revolut