Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,939 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 23 June 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 518 565 692
Rank change year-on-year +47 +127 +114
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 226 106 202
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.23% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.25% 0.26% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 149 40 109
10th Percentile £59,617 £53,025 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £62,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £82,500 £77,500
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% +6.45% +14.81%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £88,750
90th Percentile - £98,375 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £71,991 £75,000
% change year-on-year +4.18% -4.01% +15.38%

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 89,062 40,399 103,075
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.02% 89.44% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 61,111 23,040 74,444
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,750 £38,567
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 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,474 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year - - -6.54%

Senior Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Data Scientist' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Data Scientist job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Data Scientist job vacancies in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Data Scientist over the 6 months to 23 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Data Scientist in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Top 15 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Data Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 23 June 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 +80 221 £80,939 -4.78% 41
UK excluding London +5 115 £75,000 +4.18% 21
London +33 108 £95,000 +11.76% 30
Work from Home +42 89 £72,500 -1.35% 14
North of England +15 50 £75,000 +17.19% 3
North West - 37 £75,000 - 3
Midlands -4 36 £75,000 +30.43% 1
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 - 1
South West -76 11 £58,497 -23.03% 3
East of England - 9 £86,725 - 2
Yorkshire -28 8 £75,000 +17.19%
South East -19 6 £40,000 - 10
North East - 5 £83,774 -
West Midlands -21 4 £70,860 +23.23%
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 23 June 2026, Senior 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 Senior Data Scientist in the job title.

1 226 (100.00%) Data Science
2 112 (49.56%) Machine Learning
3 95 (42.04%) Python
4 85 (37.61%) AI
5 61 (26.99%) Mentoring
6 48 (21.24%) SQL
7 44 (19.47%) Analytics
8 39 (17.26%) Degree
9 38 (16.81%) Statistics
10 37 (16.37%) Roadmaps
11 33 (14.60%) Software Engineering
12 32 (14.16%) PyTorch
13 29 (12.83%) LLM
13 29 (12.83%) MLOps
13 29 (12.83%) TensorFlow
14 26 (11.50%) Actionable Insight
14 26 (11.50%) CI/CD
15 25 (11.06%) Mathematics
15 25 (11.06%) Project Management
16 24 (10.62%) Deep Learning
16 24 (10.62%) Hugging Face
17 23 (10.18%) Azure
17 23 (10.18%) PhD
18 21 (9.29%) AWS
18 21 (9.29%) Security Cleared
19 20 (8.85%) Data Engineering
19 20 (8.85%) Generative AI
19 20 (8.85%) Natural Language Processing
20 18 (7.96%) Master's Degree
20 18 (7.96%) Technical Leadership

Senior 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 13 (5.75%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.33%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.77%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.88%) SPSS
3 1 (0.44%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 23 (10.18%) Azure
2 21 (9.29%) AWS
3 16 (7.08%) GCP
4 9 (3.98%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.65%) Dataform
5 6 (2.65%) dbt
5 6 (2.65%) SaaS
6 3 (1.33%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.33%) Amazon SageMaker
6 3 (1.33%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.33%) Serverless
6 3 (1.33%) Snowflake
7 1 (0.44%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.44%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.33%) Broadband
2 1 (0.44%) 5G
2 1 (0.44%) LTE
2 1 (0.44%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.44%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (4.87%) Amazon Redshift
2 9 (3.98%) Power BI
2 9 (3.98%) Tableau
3 6 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (2.65%) Looker
3 6 (2.65%) Metabase
4 3 (1.33%) Amazon Athena
5 2 (0.88%) Big Data
5 2 (0.88%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.44%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.44%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 14 (6.19%) Git
2 3 (1.33%) MLflow
3 1 (0.44%) JIRA
General
1 64 (28.32%) Finance
2 27 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (9.29%) Social Skills
4 19 (8.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (7.96%) Banking
6 13 (5.75%) Public Sector
7 12 (5.31%) Financial Institution
8 8 (3.54%) Marketing
9 7 (3.10%) Retail
10 6 (2.65%) Wearables
11 5 (2.21%) Automotive
11 5 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.88%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.88%) Publishing
13 1 (0.44%) Advertising
13 1 (0.44%) Law
13 1 (0.44%) Legal
13 1 (0.44%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (14.16%) PyTorch
2 29 (12.83%) TensorFlow
3 24 (10.62%) Hugging Face
4 12 (5.31%) scikit-learn
5 11 (4.87%) SpaCy
6 6 (2.65%) Pandas
6 6 (2.65%) PySpark
6 6 (2.65%) XGBoost
7 5 (2.21%) EDI
7 5 (2.21%) NumPy
8 4 (1.77%) LangChain
9 3 (1.33%) LlamaIndex
10 1 (0.44%) Kaldi
10 1 (0.44%) Keras
10 1 (0.44%) LightGBM
10 1 (0.44%) SciPy
10 1 (0.44%) Streamlit
10 1 (0.44%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 11 (4.87%) e-Learning
2 9 (3.98%) Algorithms
3 6 (2.65%) Product Ownership
4 4 (1.77%) Cloud Native
5 3 (1.33%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.44%) Acoustics
6 1 (0.44%) Clustering
6 1 (0.44%) Credit Risk
6 1 (0.44%) Educational Technology
6 1 (0.44%) FPGA
6 1 (0.44%) Life Science
Processes & Methodologies
1 226 (100.00%) Data Science
2 112 (49.56%) Machine Learning
3 85 (37.61%) AI
4 61 (26.99%) Mentoring
5 44 (19.47%) Analytics
6 38 (16.81%) Statistics
7 37 (16.37%) Roadmaps
8 33 (14.60%) Software Engineering
9 29 (12.83%) LLM
9 29 (12.83%) MLOps
10 26 (11.50%) Actionable Insight
10 26 (11.50%) CI/CD
11 25 (11.06%) Mathematics
11 25 (11.06%) Project Management
12 24 (10.62%) Deep Learning
13 20 (8.85%) Data Engineering
13 20 (8.85%) Generative AI
13 20 (8.85%) Natural Language Processing
14 18 (7.96%) Technical Leadership
14 18 (7.96%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 95 (42.04%) Python
2 48 (21.24%) SQL
3 15 (6.64%) R
4 6 (2.65%) Julia
5 1 (0.44%) C++
Qualifications
1 39 (17.26%) Degree
2 23 (10.18%) PhD
3 21 (9.29%) Security Cleared
4 18 (7.96%) Master's Degree
5 15 (6.64%) DV Cleared
6 7 (3.10%) SC Cleared
7 6 (2.65%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (7.08%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.88%) QA
System Software
1 8 (3.54%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (3.54%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (2.65%) Microsoft
2 4 (1.77%) Google
3 3 (1.33%) Databricks
4 1 (0.44%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.44%) Dataiku