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 30 June 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 524 574 714
Rank change year-on-year +50 +140 +85
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 232 102 189
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.22% 0.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.26% 0.25% 0.19%
Number of salaries quoted 153 40 98
10th Percentile £59,617 £60,450 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £85,000 £77,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.78% +9.68% +14.81%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £87,500
90th Percentile - £98,375 £110,375
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 90,569 41,555 99,935
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.11% 89.51% 94.72%
Number of salaries quoted 62,167 23,987 72,008
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £56,673 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% +7.95% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £51,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.00% - -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 30 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Data Scientist in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Top 16 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 30 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 +70 224 £80,939 -4.78% 46
UK excluding London +13 120 £75,000 +4.18% 19
London +35 109 £92,500 +8.82% 38
Work from Home +23 91 £75,000 - 15
North of England -9 52 £75,000 +17.19% 3
North West +37 39 £75,000 -6.25% 3
Midlands -2 36 £75,000 -
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 -
South West -79 12 £58,497 -29.10% 2
Yorkshire -27 8 £75,000 +17.19%
East of England - 8 £86,725 - 1
South East -19 6 £40,000 - 11
North East - 5 £83,774 -
West Midlands -21 4 £70,860 -
Wales -47 3 £100,000 +17.65% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 232 (100.00%) Data Science
2 115 (49.57%) Machine Learning
3 96 (41.38%) Python
4 87 (37.50%) AI
5 63 (27.16%) Mentoring
6 48 (20.69%) SQL
7 47 (20.26%) Analytics
8 39 (16.81%) Degree
9 37 (15.95%) Roadmaps
9 37 (15.95%) Statistics
10 33 (14.22%) PyTorch
10 33 (14.22%) Software Engineering
11 32 (13.79%) MLOps
12 31 (13.36%) LLM
13 30 (12.93%) TensorFlow
14 27 (11.64%) CI/CD
15 26 (11.21%) Actionable Insight
16 25 (10.78%) Azure
16 25 (10.78%) Project Management
17 24 (10.34%) Deep Learning
17 24 (10.34%) Hugging Face
18 23 (9.91%) Mathematics
18 23 (9.91%) PhD
19 22 (9.48%) AWS
19 22 (9.48%) Natural Language Processing
20 21 (9.05%) Data Engineering
20 21 (9.05%) Generative AI
21 20 (8.62%) Security Cleared
22 19 (8.19%) Master's Degree
23 18 (7.76%) GCP

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 14 (6.03%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.29%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.72%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.86%) SPSS
3 1 (0.43%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 25 (10.78%) Azure
2 22 (9.48%) AWS
3 18 (7.76%) GCP
4 9 (3.88%) Power Platform
4 9 (3.88%) SaaS
5 6 (2.59%) Dataform
5 6 (2.59%) dbt
6 4 (1.72%) Amazon SageMaker
7 3 (1.29%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.29%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (1.29%) Serverless
7 3 (1.29%) Snowflake
8 1 (0.43%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (0.43%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.29%) Broadband
2 1 (0.43%) 5G
2 1 (0.43%) LTE
2 1 (0.43%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.43%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.17%) Amazon Redshift
2 9 (3.88%) Power BI
2 9 (3.88%) Tableau
3 6 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (2.59%) Looker
3 6 (2.59%) Metabase
4 3 (1.29%) Amazon Athena
5 2 (0.86%) Big Data
5 2 (0.86%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.43%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.43%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 14 (6.03%) Git
2 3 (1.29%) MLflow
3 1 (0.43%) JIRA
General
1 65 (28.02%) Finance
2 27 (11.64%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (9.48%) Social Skills
4 19 (8.19%) Banking
4 19 (8.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 13 (5.60%) Financial Institution
5 13 (5.60%) Public Sector
6 8 (3.45%) Marketing
6 8 (3.45%) Retail
7 6 (2.59%) Wearables
8 5 (2.16%) Automotive
8 5 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.86%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.86%) Publishing
10 1 (0.43%) Advertising
10 1 (0.43%) Law
10 1 (0.43%) Legal
10 1 (0.43%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (14.22%) PyTorch
2 30 (12.93%) TensorFlow
3 24 (10.34%) Hugging Face
4 12 (5.17%) scikit-learn
4 12 (5.17%) SpaCy
5 6 (2.59%) Pandas
5 6 (2.59%) PySpark
5 6 (2.59%) XGBoost
6 5 (2.16%) EDI
6 5 (2.16%) LangChain
6 5 (2.16%) NumPy
7 4 (1.72%) LlamaIndex
8 1 (0.43%) Kaldi
8 1 (0.43%) Keras
8 1 (0.43%) LightGBM
8 1 (0.43%) SciPy
8 1 (0.43%) Streamlit
8 1 (0.43%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 12 (5.17%) e-Learning
2 9 (3.88%) Algorithms
3 6 (2.59%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.16%) Cloud Native
5 4 (1.72%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.43%) Acoustics
6 1 (0.43%) Clustering
6 1 (0.43%) Credit Risk
6 1 (0.43%) Educational Technology
6 1 (0.43%) FPGA
6 1 (0.43%) Life Science
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (100.00%) Data Science
2 115 (49.57%) Machine Learning
3 87 (37.50%) AI
4 63 (27.16%) Mentoring
5 47 (20.26%) Analytics
6 37 (15.95%) Roadmaps
6 37 (15.95%) Statistics
7 33 (14.22%) Software Engineering
8 32 (13.79%) MLOps
9 31 (13.36%) LLM
10 27 (11.64%) CI/CD
11 26 (11.21%) Actionable Insight
12 25 (10.78%) Project Management
13 24 (10.34%) Deep Learning
14 23 (9.91%) Mathematics
15 22 (9.48%) Natural Language Processing
16 21 (9.05%) Data Engineering
16 21 (9.05%) Generative AI
17 18 (7.76%) Visualisation
18 17 (7.33%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 96 (41.38%) Python
2 48 (20.69%) SQL
3 15 (6.47%) R
4 6 (2.59%) Julia
5 1 (0.43%) C++
Qualifications
1 39 (16.81%) Degree
2 23 (9.91%) PhD
3 20 (8.62%) Security Cleared
4 19 (8.19%) Master's Degree
5 14 (6.03%) DV Cleared
6 7 (3.02%) SC Cleared
7 6 (2.59%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.86%) QA
System Software
1 9 (3.88%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (3.88%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (2.59%) Microsoft
2 4 (1.72%) Google
3 3 (1.29%) Databricks
4 1 (0.43%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.43%) Dataiku