Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 17 May 2026.

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

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 526 546 677
Rank change year-on-year +20 +131 +118
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 189 113 210
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.26% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.22% 0.29% 0.23%
Number of salaries quoted 132 44 118
10th Percentile £59,617 £53,750 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £68,750 £66,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year - - +16.79%
75th Percentile £95,000 £90,313 £95,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £104,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £70,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year +7.14% -9.68% +19.23%

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 85,551 39,541 91,790
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.32% 89.78% 94.62%
Number of salaries quoted 56,475 22,949 67,336
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 £52,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -5.66%

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 17 May 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 17 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 +36 185 £80,000 - 64
London +20 97 £90,000 +5.88% 44
UK excluding London -4 91 £75,000 +7.14% 26
Work from Home +34 65 £70,000 -4.76% 32
North of England -5 38 £75,000 +17.19% 7
North West - 31 £75,000 - 6
Midlands -14 21 £75,000 +30.43% 6
East Midlands - 16 £75,000 - 6
South West -64 11 £58,497 -18.74% 2
East of England - 10 £86,725 -
South East -11 8 £40,000 -54.29% 10
West Midlands -28 5 £75,000 +30.43%
Yorkshire -49 4 £66,720 +4.25% 1
North East - 3 £66,720 -
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 17 May 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.

1 189 (100.00%) Data Science
2 83 (43.92%) Machine Learning
3 73 (38.62%) AI
3 73 (38.62%) Python
4 38 (20.11%) Mentoring
5 33 (17.46%) SQL
6 31 (16.40%) Analytics
7 28 (14.81%) Statistics
8 27 (14.29%) Degree
8 27 (14.29%) LLM
9 24 (12.70%) Mathematics
9 24 (12.70%) Security Cleared
10 21 (11.11%) MLOps
11 20 (10.58%) PhD
12 18 (9.52%) DV Cleared
12 18 (9.52%) Generative AI
12 18 (9.52%) PyTorch
12 18 (9.52%) Technical Leadership
13 17 (8.99%) Azure
13 17 (8.99%) TensorFlow
13 17 (8.99%) Visualisation
14 16 (8.47%) CI/CD
14 16 (8.47%) Data Engineering
15 15 (7.94%) AWS
15 15 (7.94%) Line Management
15 15 (7.94%) Natural Language Processing
15 15 (7.94%) Software Engineering
16 14 (7.41%) R
16 14 (7.41%) Roadmaps
17 13 (6.88%) Actionable Insight

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 8 (4.23%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.06%) SAS
3 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (2.12%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.53%) SPSS
2 1 (0.53%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 17 (8.99%) Azure
2 15 (7.94%) AWS
3 11 (5.82%) GCP
4 10 (5.29%) Power Platform
5 7 (3.70%) dbt
6 6 (3.17%) Dataform
7 5 (2.65%) SaaS
8 4 (2.12%) Snowflake
9 3 (1.59%) Amazon S3
9 3 (1.59%) Amazon SageMaker
9 3 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
9 3 (1.59%) Serverless
10 1 (0.53%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.53%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.12%) Broadband
2 1 (0.53%) 5G
2 1 (0.53%) LTE
2 1 (0.53%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.53%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.29%) Power BI
2 9 (4.76%) Tableau
3 6 (3.17%) Amazon Redshift
3 6 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (3.17%) Looker
3 6 (3.17%) Metabase
4 3 (1.59%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (1.59%) Big Data
5 2 (1.06%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.53%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 9 (4.76%) Git
2 3 (1.59%) MLflow
3 1 (0.53%) JIRA
General
1 42 (22.22%) Finance
2 24 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
3 17 (8.99%) Social Skills
4 14 (7.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 10 (5.29%) Banking
6 8 (4.23%) Marketing
6 8 (4.23%) Public Sector
7 7 (3.70%) Financial Institution
7 7 (3.70%) Retail
8 4 (2.12%) Automotive
8 4 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (1.59%) Wearables
10 2 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.53%) Advertising
11 1 (0.53%) Digital Economy
11 1 (0.53%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (9.52%) PyTorch
2 17 (8.99%) TensorFlow
3 11 (5.82%) Hugging Face
3 11 (5.82%) scikit-learn
4 6 (3.17%) Pandas
4 6 (3.17%) SpaCy
4 6 (3.17%) XGBoost
5 5 (2.65%) EDI
5 5 (2.65%) NumPy
5 5 (2.65%) PySpark
6 4 (2.12%) LangChain
7 3 (1.59%) LlamaIndex
8 2 (1.06%) NetworkX
8 2 (1.06%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.53%) Kafka
9 1 (0.53%) Keras
9 1 (0.53%) LightGBM
9 1 (0.53%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.53%) SciPy
9 1 (0.53%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (3.17%) Algorithms
1 6 (3.17%) e-Learning
1 6 (3.17%) Product Ownership
2 4 (2.12%) Cloud Native
3 2 (1.06%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.53%) Clustering
4 1 (0.53%) Data Structures
4 1 (0.53%) FPGA
4 1 (0.53%) Life Science
4 1 (0.53%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (100.00%) Data Science
2 83 (43.92%) Machine Learning
3 73 (38.62%) AI
4 38 (20.11%) Mentoring
5 31 (16.40%) Analytics
6 28 (14.81%) Statistics
7 27 (14.29%) LLM
8 24 (12.70%) Mathematics
9 21 (11.11%) MLOps
10 18 (9.52%) Generative AI
10 18 (9.52%) Technical Leadership
11 17 (8.99%) Visualisation
12 16 (8.47%) CI/CD
12 16 (8.47%) Data Engineering
13 15 (7.94%) Line Management
13 15 (7.94%) Natural Language Processing
13 15 (7.94%) Software Engineering
14 14 (7.41%) Roadmaps
15 13 (6.88%) Actionable Insight
15 13 (6.88%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 73 (38.62%) Python
2 33 (17.46%) SQL
3 14 (7.41%) R
4 6 (3.17%) Julia
5 1 (0.53%) C++
5 1 (0.53%) Scala
Qualifications
1 27 (14.29%) Degree
2 24 (12.70%) Security Cleared
3 20 (10.58%) PhD
4 18 (9.52%) DV Cleared
5 8 (4.23%) Master's Degree
6 7 (3.70%) SC Cleared
7 6 (3.17%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.35%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.06%) QA
3 1 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 8 (4.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (4.23%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.53%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (3.17%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.12%) Google
3 2 (1.06%) Databricks
4 1 (0.53%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.53%) Mapbox