Life Science Job Trends

Life Sciences
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Life Science in permanent job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Life Science over the 6 months leading up to 30 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 385 300 410
Rank change year-on-year -85 +110 +67
Permanent jobs citing Life Science 280 520 334
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.47% 0.94% 0.65%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.35% 2.55% 1.74%
Number of salaries quoted 66 68 118
10th Percentile £34,000 £39,700 £29,000
25th Percentile £38,750 £47,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,750 £65,000 £51,250
Median % change year-on-year -9.62% +26.83% -26.79%
75th Percentile £68,750 £106,250 £67,250
90th Percentile £101,250 £110,000 £95,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £45,500 £59,250 £42,000
% change year-on-year -23.21% +41.07% -32.80%

All Generic Skills
UK

Life Science falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring generic IT skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 20,741 20,415 19,232
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 34.98% 36.94% 37.37%
Number of salaries quoted 10,403 9,792 14,066
10th Percentile £27,750 £33,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,785
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -7.69%
75th Percentile £77,500 £82,500 £83,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £106,289
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,160 £54,125 £55,000
% change year-on-year -14.72% -1.59% -

Life Science
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Life Science relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Life Science job vacancy trend in the UK

Life Science
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Life Science.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Life Science

Life Science
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Life Science over the 6 months to 30 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Life Science in the UK

Life Science
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Life Science within the UK over the 6 months to 30 December 2025. 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 -74 256 £62,500 -7.41% 710
UK excluding London -16 208 £45,500 -23.21% 648
South East +95 145 £62,500 +14.68% 164
London -80 60 £93,750 -8.54% 106
Work from Home -22 51 £50,000 -2.44% 244
North of England -55 28 £41,500 -43.15% 138
North West -4 18 £36,000 -51.35% 62
Scotland +5 13 £42,500 -32.00% 28
East of England -8 11 £51,250 +2.50% 110
South West +4 8 £48,500 -3.00% 76
North East -1 6 £42,500 - 12
Midlands +10 4 £60,000 -32.39% 117
Yorkshire -37 4 £41,500 -20.95% 64
West Midlands +7 2 £65,000 -26.76% 58
East Midlands -11 2 £55,000 - 53

Life Science
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 3 (1.07%) Confluence
2 2 (0.71%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.36%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.36%) CMS
Applications
1 9 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.43%) Fusion 360
5 1 (0.36%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (1.43%) Unit4 Business World
2 3 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (1.07%) SAP SCM
3 2 (0.71%) Sage X3
Cloud Services
1 32 (11.43%) Azure
2 26 (9.29%) AWS
3 23 (8.21%) Azure AI
4 21 (7.50%) Amazon SageMaker
4 21 (7.50%) Vertex AI
5 16 (5.71%) SaaS
6 12 (4.29%) Veeva
7 7 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
8 6 (2.14%) Smartsheet
9 5 (1.79%) Miro
10 4 (1.43%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (1.43%) Serverless
11 3 (1.07%) Amazon Cognito
11 3 (1.07%) Amazon EC2
11 3 (1.07%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.07%) Azure Machine Learning
11 3 (1.07%) GitHub
12 2 (0.71%) Dynamics 365
12 2 (0.71%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.14%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.07%) Intrusion Detection
2 3 (1.07%) MQTT
3 2 (0.71%) Firewall
3 2 (0.71%) VPN
4 1 (0.36%) DHCP
4 1 (0.36%) DNS
4 1 (0.36%) Network Security
4 1 (0.36%) RS-232
4 1 (0.36%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (11.79%) Metadata
2 10 (3.57%) Data Lake
3 3 (1.07%) Metadata Repository
4 2 (0.71%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (0.71%) Power BI
5 1 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.36%) Big Data
5 1 (0.36%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.36%) Neo4j
5 1 (0.36%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 7 (2.50%) Git
2 6 (2.14%) JIRA
2 6 (2.14%) MLflow
3 3 (1.07%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.36%) JUnit
4 1 (0.36%) Maven
4 1 (0.36%) Selenium
General
1 121 (43.21%) Finance
2 88 (31.43%) Social Skills
3 79 (28.21%) Pharmaceutical
4 33 (11.79%) Law
5 30 (10.71%) Marketing
6 27 (9.64%) Retail
7 24 (8.57%) Aerospace
8 23 (8.21%) Banking
9 22 (7.86%) Electronics
10 20 (7.14%) Manufacturing
11 17 (6.07%) Analytical Skills
12 16 (5.71%) Automotive
13 10 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (3.21%) Presentation Skills
15 5 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.71%) Publishing
17 1 (0.36%) Advertising
17 1 (0.36%) Brand Awareness
17 1 (0.36%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 98 (35.00%) Lead
2 36 (12.86%) Senior
3 28 (10.00%) Team Leader
4 20 (7.14%) Senior Manager
5 14 (5.00%) Consultant
5 14 (5.00%) Development Manager
6 12 (4.29%) Data Manager
7 11 (3.93%) Business Development Manager
7 11 (3.93%) Business Manager
8 9 (3.21%) Data Steward
9 8 (2.86%) Accountant
9 8 (2.86%) Coordinator
9 8 (2.86%) Data Coordinator
9 8 (2.86%) Recruitment Consultant
10 7 (2.50%) Associate Director
10 7 (2.50%) Project Engineer
10 7 (2.50%) Technologist
11 6 (2.14%) Analyst
11 6 (2.14%) Mechanical Engineer
12 5 (1.79%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (3.93%) FHIR
2 5 (1.79%) Keras
2 5 (1.79%) TensorFlow
3 4 (1.43%) PyTorch
4 3 (1.07%) Middleware
4 3 (1.07%) REST
4 3 (1.07%) scikit-learn
4 3 (1.07%) SOAP
5 2 (0.71%) HTML
6 1 (0.36%) .NET
6 1 (0.36%) CSS
6 1 (0.36%) JSR 170
6 1 (0.36%) OSGi
6 1 (0.36%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 47 (16.79%) Management Information System
2 26 (9.29%) Operational Technology
2 26 (9.29%) Pharmacovigilance
3 19 (6.79%) Onboarding
4 15 (5.36%) Biopharmaceutical
5 13 (4.64%) Omics
6 12 (4.29%) Algorithms
7 6 (2.14%) LIMS
8 5 (1.79%) Driving Licence
8 5 (1.79%) Robotics
9 3 (1.07%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.07%) Animation
9 3 (1.07%) Hackathon
9 3 (1.07%) Linux Command Line
9 3 (1.07%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.07%) NHS
9 3 (1.07%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.71%) 3D Graphics
10 2 (0.71%) Renewable Energy
10 2 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 4 (1.43%) Linux
2 2 (0.71%) Unix
3 1 (0.36%) Windows
3 1 (0.36%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (33.57%) Computer Science
2 90 (32.14%) AI
3 87 (31.07%) Data Science
4 83 (29.64%) Analytics
5 80 (28.57%) Machine Learning
6 77 (27.50%) Agile
7 69 (24.64%) Enterprise Architecture
8 67 (23.93%) Immunology
9 66 (23.57%) Hematology
10 54 (19.29%) Use Case
11 49 (17.50%) Business Development
12 42 (15.00%) Validation
13 40 (14.29%) Biotechnology
14 38 (13.57%) Matrix Organization
15 35 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
16 33 (11.79%) Data Governance
16 33 (11.79%) Data Management
16 33 (11.79%) Thought Leadership
17 32 (11.43%) Roadmaps
18 29 (10.36%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 24 (8.57%) Python
2 10 (3.57%) SQL
3 4 (1.43%) C#
3 4 (1.43%) C++
3 4 (1.43%) R
4 2 (0.71%) Java
5 1 (0.36%) ActionScript
5 1 (0.36%) ActionScript 2.0
5 1 (0.36%) C
5 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
Qualifications
1 185 (66.07%) Degree
2 106 (37.86%) Master's Degree
3 58 (20.71%) PhD
4 27 (9.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (2.86%) ACCA
6 5 (1.79%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.71%) MCP
7 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.36%) CISA
8 1 (0.36%) CISM
8 1 (0.36%) CISSP
8 1 (0.36%) HNC
8 1 (0.36%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (22.86%) GxP
2 29 (10.36%) GDPR
3 25 (8.93%) Data Quality
4 24 (8.57%) Accessibility
5 23 (8.21%) HIPAA
6 21 (7.50%) EU AI Act
6 21 (7.50%) PSD2
6 21 (7.50%) Solvency II
7 11 (3.93%) CDISC
7 11 (3.93%) HL7
8 8 (2.86%) GAAP
9 6 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 5 (1.79%) ISO 13485
10 5 (1.79%) QA
11 3 (1.07%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 3 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (1.07%) NIST
12 2 (0.71%) GMP
12 2 (0.71%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.71%) SLA
System Software
1 22 (7.86%) VMware Infrastructure
2 8 (2.86%) Docker
3 2 (0.71%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.71%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 7 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 3 (1.07%) Ansible
2 3 (1.07%) Kubeflow
3 1 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
3 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (0.36%) SCCM
3 1 (0.36%) Terraform
Vendors
1 24 (8.57%) Microsoft
2 22 (7.86%) Google
2 22 (7.86%) VMware
3 3 (1.07%) Agilent
3 3 (1.07%) SAP
4 2 (0.71%) Databricks
4 2 (0.71%) LabVantage
4 2 (0.71%) Sage
4 2 (0.71%) Salesforce
4 2 (0.71%) Zscaler
5 1 (0.36%) Adobe
5 1 (0.36%) Apple
5 1 (0.36%) HubSpot
5 1 (0.36%) IBM