Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £82,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 3 July 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 517 570 717
Rank change year-on-year +53 +147 +71
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 236 101 187
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.21% 0.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.26% 0.24% 0.19%
Number of salaries quoted 157 42 98
10th Percentile £59,617 £62,000 £50,000
25th Percentile £67,500 £70,000 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £82,500 £85,000 £77,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.94% +9.68% +14.81%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £87,500
90th Percentile - £97,500 £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 90,996 42,434 99,932
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.13% 89.80% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 62,462 24,678 72,012
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £38,500 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £56,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +7.62% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £76,250 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £51,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.00% - -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 3 July 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 3 July 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 +80 227 £80,939 -4.78% 75
UK excluding London +17 123 £75,000 +4.18% 26
London +44 110 £95,000 +11.76% 54
Work from Home +33 92 £75,000 -3.23% 28
North of England +13 53 £75,000 +17.19% 3
North West +30 40 £75,000 -9.09% 3
Midlands +12 36 £75,000 - 1
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 - 1
South West -82 13 £58,497 -29.10% 4
Yorkshire -29 8 £75,000 +17.19%
East of England - 8 £86,725 - 2
South East -20 6 £40,000 - 14
North East - 5 £83,774 -
West Midlands -20 4 £70,860 -
Wales -38 4 £102,500 +20.59% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 3 July 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.

1 236 (100.00%) Data Science
2 117 (49.58%) Machine Learning
3 99 (41.95%) Python
4 90 (38.14%) AI
5 64 (27.12%) Mentoring
6 51 (21.61%) SQL
7 50 (21.19%) Analytics
8 39 (16.53%) Degree
9 37 (15.68%) Roadmaps
9 37 (15.68%) Statistics
10 34 (14.41%) PyTorch
11 33 (13.98%) MLOps
11 33 (13.98%) Software Engineering
12 32 (13.56%) LLM
13 31 (13.14%) TensorFlow
14 27 (11.44%) CI/CD
15 26 (11.02%) Actionable Insight
15 26 (11.02%) Azure
16 25 (10.59%) Project Management
17 24 (10.17%) Deep Learning
17 24 (10.17%) Hugging Face
18 23 (9.75%) AWS
18 23 (9.75%) Mathematics
18 23 (9.75%) Natural Language Processing
18 23 (9.75%) PhD
19 22 (9.32%) Data Engineering
19 22 (9.32%) Generative AI
20 19 (8.05%) Decision-Making
20 19 (8.05%) Master's Degree
20 19 (8.05%) Security Cleared

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 (5.93%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.27%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.69%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.85%) SPSS
3 1 (0.42%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 26 (11.02%) Azure
2 23 (9.75%) AWS
3 18 (7.63%) GCP
4 10 (4.24%) SaaS
5 9 (3.81%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.54%) Dataform
6 6 (2.54%) dbt
7 5 (2.12%) Amazon SageMaker
8 3 (1.27%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.27%) Serverless
8 3 (1.27%) Snowflake
9 1 (0.42%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.42%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.27%) Broadband
2 1 (0.42%) 5G
2 1 (0.42%) LTE
2 1 (0.42%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.08%) Amazon Redshift
2 9 (3.81%) Power BI
2 9 (3.81%) Tableau
3 8 (3.39%) Data Warehouse
4 6 (2.54%) Looker
4 6 (2.54%) Metabase
5 3 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.85%) Big Data
6 2 (0.85%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.42%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.42%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 16 (6.78%) Git
2 3 (1.27%) MLflow
3 1 (0.42%) JIRA
General
1 67 (28.39%) Finance
2 27 (11.44%) Analytical Skills
3 23 (9.75%) Social Skills
4 21 (8.90%) Banking
5 19 (8.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (5.51%) Financial Institution
6 13 (5.51%) Public Sector
7 8 (3.39%) Marketing
7 8 (3.39%) Retail
8 6 (2.54%) Wearables
9 5 (2.12%) Automotive
9 5 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.85%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.85%) Publishing
10 2 (0.85%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.42%) Advertising
11 1 (0.42%) Law
11 1 (0.42%) Legal
11 1 (0.42%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (14.41%) PyTorch
2 31 (13.14%) TensorFlow
3 24 (10.17%) Hugging Face
4 14 (5.93%) scikit-learn
5 12 (5.08%) SpaCy
6 8 (3.39%) Pandas
6 8 (3.39%) XGBoost
7 7 (2.97%) NumPy
8 6 (2.54%) PySpark
9 5 (2.12%) EDI
9 5 (2.12%) LangChain
10 4 (1.69%) LlamaIndex
11 1 (0.42%) Kaldi
11 1 (0.42%) Keras
11 1 (0.42%) LightGBM
11 1 (0.42%) SciPy
11 1 (0.42%) Streamlit
11 1 (0.42%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 12 (5.08%) e-Learning
2 9 (3.81%) Algorithms
3 6 (2.54%) Product Ownership
4 5 (2.12%) Cloud Native
5 4 (1.69%) AI Agents
6 3 (1.27%) Credit Risk
7 1 (0.42%) Acoustics
7 1 (0.42%) Clustering
7 1 (0.42%) Educational Technology
7 1 (0.42%) FPGA
7 1 (0.42%) Life Science
Processes & Methodologies
1 236 (100.00%) Data Science
2 117 (49.58%) Machine Learning
3 90 (38.14%) AI
4 64 (27.12%) Mentoring
5 50 (21.19%) Analytics
6 37 (15.68%) Roadmaps
6 37 (15.68%) Statistics
7 33 (13.98%) MLOps
7 33 (13.98%) Software Engineering
8 32 (13.56%) LLM
9 27 (11.44%) CI/CD
10 26 (11.02%) Actionable Insight
11 25 (10.59%) Project Management
12 24 (10.17%) Deep Learning
13 23 (9.75%) Mathematics
13 23 (9.75%) Natural Language Processing
14 22 (9.32%) Data Engineering
14 22 (9.32%) Generative AI
15 19 (8.05%) Decision-Making
16 18 (7.63%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 99 (41.95%) Python
2 51 (21.61%) SQL
3 15 (6.36%) R
4 6 (2.54%) Julia
5 1 (0.42%) C++
Qualifications
1 39 (16.53%) Degree
2 23 (9.75%) PhD
3 19 (8.05%) Master's Degree
3 19 (8.05%) Security Cleared
4 13 (5.51%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.54%) DBS Check
5 6 (2.54%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.63%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.85%) EU AI Act
2 2 (0.85%) GDPR
2 2 (0.85%) QA
System Software
1 9 (3.81%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (3.81%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (2.54%) Microsoft
2 4 (1.69%) Google
3 3 (1.27%) Databricks
4 1 (0.42%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.42%) Dataiku