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 12 April 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 569 516 680
Rank change year-on-year -53 +164 +135
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 133 114 184
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.28% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.17% 0.31% 0.21%
Number of salaries quoted 99 44 113
10th Percentile £59,004 £53,750 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £66,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £77,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -3.13% +16.24%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,313 £96,539
90th Percentile - £104,000 £114,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £76,250
% change year-on-year - -8.20% +17.31%

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 78,032 36,833 87,501
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 89.60% 94.54%
Number of salaries quoted 50,099 23,287 65,490
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -4.76%

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 12 April 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 12 April 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 -32 130 £80,939 +1.17% 47
London +1 67 £95,000 +11.76% 30
UK excluding London -60 66 £70,000 - 30
Work from Home -11 37 £70,000 -4.76% 27
North of England -41 28 £70,000 +9.38% 9
North West - 22 £75,000 - 8
South West -61 11 £58,497 -18.74% 1
East of England - 10 £86,725 - 1
South East -27 7 £40,000 -54.29% 12
Midlands -39 7 £70,000 +21.74% 4
West Midlands -14 4 £70,860 +23.23%
Yorkshire -55 4 £66,720 +4.25%
East Midlands - 3 £70,000 - 4
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
North East - 2 £66,720 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 12 April 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.

1 133 (100.00%) Data Science
2 59 (44.36%) Machine Learning
3 57 (42.86%) AI
4 51 (38.35%) Python
5 27 (20.30%) SQL
6 25 (18.80%) Analytics
7 23 (17.29%) Degree
7 23 (17.29%) Mathematics
7 23 (17.29%) Mentoring
7 23 (17.29%) Security Cleared
8 18 (13.53%) DV Cleared
8 18 (13.53%) Statistics
9 17 (12.78%) Generative AI
9 17 (12.78%) Visualisation
10 16 (12.03%) Line Management
10 16 (12.03%) Technical Leadership
11 15 (11.28%) LLM
11 15 (11.28%) PhD
12 13 (9.77%) R
13 12 (9.02%) CI/CD
13 12 (9.02%) Data Quality
14 11 (8.27%) Data Engineering
14 11 (8.27%) Data Strategy
14 11 (8.27%) MLOps
14 11 (8.27%) Natural Language Processing
14 11 (8.27%) Problem-Solving
14 11 (8.27%) Statistical Analysis
15 10 (7.52%) Azure
15 10 (7.52%) Business Intelligence
15 10 (7.52%) Data Visualisation

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 3 (2.26%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (1.50%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.75%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 10 (7.52%) Azure
1 10 (7.52%) Power Platform
2 9 (6.77%) AWS
3 7 (5.26%) dbt
4 6 (4.51%) Dataform
5 4 (3.01%) Amazon S3
5 4 (3.01%) GCP
5 4 (3.01%) Snowflake
6 3 (2.26%) Amazon SageMaker
6 3 (2.26%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (2.26%) Serverless
7 1 (0.75%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.75%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (3.01%) Broadband
2 1 (0.75%) LTE
2 1 (0.75%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.75%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.52%) Power BI
2 9 (6.77%) Tableau
3 6 (4.51%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (4.51%) Looker
3 6 (4.51%) Metabase
4 4 (3.01%) Big Data
5 3 (2.26%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (1.50%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.75%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.75%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.75%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.75%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (0.75%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 9 (6.77%) Git
2 4 (3.01%) MLflow
3 1 (0.75%) JIRA
General
1 23 (17.29%) Analytical Skills
2 20 (15.04%) Finance
3 14 (10.53%) Social Skills
4 10 (7.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 7 (5.26%) Marketing
5 7 (5.26%) Public Sector
5 7 (5.26%) Retail
6 4 (3.01%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (2.26%) Banking
7 3 (2.26%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (1.50%) Aerospace
8 2 (1.50%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.75%) Advertising
9 1 (0.75%) Automotive
9 1 (0.75%) Digital Economy
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (7.52%) scikit-learn
2 8 (6.02%) PyTorch
2 8 (6.02%) TensorFlow
3 5 (3.76%) EDI
3 5 (3.76%) NumPy
3 5 (3.76%) Pandas
3 5 (3.76%) PySpark
4 4 (3.01%) XGBoost
5 2 (1.50%) LangChain
5 2 (1.50%) NetworkX
5 2 (1.50%) Streamlit
6 1 (0.75%) FastAPI
6 1 (0.75%) GeoPandas
6 1 (0.75%) Hugging Face
6 1 (0.75%) Kafka
6 1 (0.75%) LlamaIndex
6 1 (0.75%) MapLibre
6 1 (0.75%) PostGIS
6 1 (0.75%) SpaCy
6 1 (0.75%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (4.51%) Product Ownership
2 5 (3.76%) Algorithms
3 2 (1.50%) Cloud Native
4 1 (0.75%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (0.75%) Data Structures
4 1 (0.75%) e-Learning
4 1 (0.75%) FPGA
4 1 (0.75%) Life Science
4 1 (0.75%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (100.00%) Data Science
2 59 (44.36%) Machine Learning
3 57 (42.86%) AI
4 25 (18.80%) Analytics
5 23 (17.29%) Mathematics
5 23 (17.29%) Mentoring
6 18 (13.53%) Statistics
7 17 (12.78%) Generative AI
7 17 (12.78%) Visualisation
8 16 (12.03%) Line Management
8 16 (12.03%) Technical Leadership
9 15 (11.28%) LLM
10 12 (9.02%) CI/CD
11 11 (8.27%) Data Engineering
11 11 (8.27%) Data Strategy
11 11 (8.27%) MLOps
11 11 (8.27%) Natural Language Processing
11 11 (8.27%) Problem-Solving
11 11 (8.27%) Statistical Analysis
12 10 (7.52%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 51 (38.35%) Python
2 27 (20.30%) SQL
3 13 (9.77%) R
4 6 (4.51%) Julia
5 1 (0.75%) C++
5 1 (0.75%) Scala
Qualifications
1 23 (17.29%) Degree
1 23 (17.29%) Security Cleared
2 18 (13.53%) DV Cleared
3 15 (11.28%) PhD
4 6 (4.51%) DBS Check
4 6 (4.51%) SC Cleared
5 3 (2.26%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (9.02%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.50%) QA
3 1 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 5 (3.76%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (3.01%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.75%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (4.51%) Microsoft
2 2 (1.50%) Databricks
2 2 (1.50%) Google
3 1 (0.75%) Cognizant
3 1 (0.75%) Mapbox