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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 533 537 690
Rank change year-on-year +4 +153 +111
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 183 115 201
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.26% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.22% 0.29% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 129 45 118
10th Percentile £59,617 £53,750 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% - +17.65%
75th Percentile £95,000 £90,000 £96,154
90th Percentile £100,000 £103,250 £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 84,295 39,140 91,393
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.25% 89.50% 94.56%
Number of salaries quoted 55,489 23,203 67,143
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,670 £52,550
Median % change year-on-year -4.63% +9.74% -12.42%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £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% -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 12 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 12 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 +39 180 £80,939 -0.99% 57
London +38 96 £90,000 +5.88% 36
UK excluding London 0 87 £75,000 +7.14% 30
Work from Home +18 60 £70,000 -6.67% 28
North of England -3 36 £75,000 +17.19% 9
North West - 30 £75,000 - 6
Midlands -16 19 £75,000 +30.43% 6
East Midlands - 14 £73,750 - 6
South West -64 11 £58,497 -18.74% 2
East of England - 10 £86,725 -
South East -3 8 £40,000 -54.29% 11
West Midlands -24 5 £75,000 +30.43%
Yorkshire -54 4 £66,720 +4.25% 1
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
North East - 2 £66,720 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 183 (100.00%) Data Science
2 83 (45.36%) Machine Learning
3 73 (39.89%) AI
4 69 (37.70%) Python
5 36 (19.67%) Mentoring
6 31 (16.94%) Analytics
6 31 (16.94%) SQL
7 27 (14.75%) Statistics
8 26 (14.21%) Degree
8 26 (14.21%) LLM
9 24 (13.11%) Mathematics
9 24 (13.11%) Security Cleared
10 20 (10.93%) MLOps
11 19 (10.38%) PhD
12 18 (9.84%) DV Cleared
12 18 (9.84%) Generative AI
13 17 (9.29%) PyTorch
13 17 (9.29%) Technical Leadership
13 17 (9.29%) Visualisation
14 16 (8.74%) Azure
14 16 (8.74%) TensorFlow
15 15 (8.20%) CI/CD
15 15 (8.20%) Data Engineering
15 15 (8.20%) Line Management
16 14 (7.65%) AWS
16 14 (7.65%) Natural Language Processing
16 14 (7.65%) Software Engineering
17 13 (7.10%) R
17 13 (7.10%) Roadmaps
18 12 (6.56%) 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 7 (3.83%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.55%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (2.19%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.55%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 16 (8.74%) Azure
2 14 (7.65%) AWS
3 10 (5.46%) GCP
3 10 (5.46%) Power Platform
4 7 (3.83%) dbt
5 6 (3.28%) Dataform
6 5 (2.73%) SaaS
7 4 (2.19%) Snowflake
8 3 (1.64%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.64%) Amazon SageMaker
8 3 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.64%) Serverless
9 1 (0.55%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.55%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.19%) Broadband
2 1 (0.55%) 5G
2 1 (0.55%) LTE
2 1 (0.55%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.55%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.46%) Power BI
2 9 (4.92%) Tableau
3 6 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (3.28%) Looker
3 6 (3.28%) Metabase
4 5 (2.73%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.64%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.64%) Big Data
6 2 (1.09%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.55%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.55%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 8 (4.37%) Git
2 3 (1.64%) MLflow
3 1 (0.55%) JIRA
General
1 38 (20.77%) Finance
2 23 (12.57%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (8.20%) Social Skills
4 14 (7.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 9 (4.92%) Banking
6 8 (4.37%) Marketing
7 7 (3.83%) Public Sector
7 7 (3.83%) Retail
8 6 (3.28%) Financial Institution
9 4 (2.19%) Automotive
9 4 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.09%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (1.09%) Wearables
11 1 (0.55%) Advertising
11 1 (0.55%) Digital Economy
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (9.29%) PyTorch
2 16 (8.74%) TensorFlow
3 10 (5.46%) Hugging Face
3 10 (5.46%) scikit-learn
4 5 (2.73%) EDI
4 5 (2.73%) NumPy
4 5 (2.73%) Pandas
4 5 (2.73%) PySpark
4 5 (2.73%) SpaCy
4 5 (2.73%) XGBoost
5 4 (2.19%) LangChain
6 3 (1.64%) LlamaIndex
7 2 (1.09%) NetworkX
7 2 (1.09%) Streamlit
8 1 (0.55%) GeoPandas
8 1 (0.55%) Kafka
8 1 (0.55%) MapLibre
8 1 (0.55%) PostGIS
8 1 (0.55%) SciPy
8 1 (0.55%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (3.28%) Algorithms
1 6 (3.28%) Product Ownership
2 5 (2.73%) e-Learning
3 4 (2.19%) Cloud Native
4 2 (1.09%) AI Agents
5 1 (0.55%) Clustering
5 1 (0.55%) Data Structures
5 1 (0.55%) FPGA
5 1 (0.55%) Life Science
5 1 (0.55%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (100.00%) Data Science
2 83 (45.36%) Machine Learning
3 73 (39.89%) AI
4 36 (19.67%) Mentoring
5 31 (16.94%) Analytics
6 27 (14.75%) Statistics
7 26 (14.21%) LLM
8 24 (13.11%) Mathematics
9 20 (10.93%) MLOps
10 18 (9.84%) Generative AI
11 17 (9.29%) Technical Leadership
11 17 (9.29%) Visualisation
12 15 (8.20%) CI/CD
12 15 (8.20%) Data Engineering
12 15 (8.20%) Line Management
13 14 (7.65%) Natural Language Processing
13 14 (7.65%) Software Engineering
14 13 (7.10%) Roadmaps
15 12 (6.56%) Actionable Insight
15 12 (6.56%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 69 (37.70%) Python
2 31 (16.94%) SQL
3 13 (7.10%) R
4 6 (3.28%) Julia
5 1 (0.55%) C++
5 1 (0.55%) Scala
Qualifications
1 26 (14.21%) Degree
2 24 (13.11%) Security Cleared
3 19 (10.38%) PhD
4 18 (9.84%) DV Cleared
5 7 (3.83%) Master's Degree
5 7 (3.83%) SC Cleared
6 6 (3.28%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.56%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.09%) QA
3 1 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 8 (4.37%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (4.37%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.55%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (3.28%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.19%) Google
3 2 (1.09%) Databricks
4 1 (0.55%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.55%) Mapbox