Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £85,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 5 August 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 524 592 639
Rank change year-on-year +68 +47 +88
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 278 91 178
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.18% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.28% 0.20% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 173 34 74
10th Percentile £65,000 £47,175 £49,613
25th Percentile £75,000 £70,000 £57,646
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £85,000 £85,000 £73,750
Median % change year-on-year - +15.25% +7.66%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £89,688
90th Percentile - £97,500 £113,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £85,000 £66,250
% change year-on-year -11.76% +28.30% +0.33%

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 98,241 44,677 79,563
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.17% 90.06% 94.91%
Number of salaries quoted 67,184 26,547 53,755
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £90,793
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 5 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Data Scientist in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Top 17 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 5 August 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 +92 261 £85,000 - 260
UK excluding London +16 139 £75,000 -11.76% 100
London +38 133 £95,000 +11.76% 171
Work from Home +28 100 £75,000 -11.76% 100
North of England +16 56 £77,513 -3.11% 29
North West +37 38 £80,000 -3.03% 14
Midlands +2 37 £75,000 - 14
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 2
South West -68 16 £58,497 -31.18% 9
Yorkshire -21 13 £75,013 +17.21% 15
South East -20 10 £90,000 - 37
Wales -44 8 £100,000 +17.65%
East of England - 7 £86,725 - 7
West Midlands -27 6 £75,000 - 12
North East - 5 £83,774 -
Northern Ireland - 3 - - 4
Scotland +9 2 £75,013 +7.16%

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

For the 6 months to 5 August 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.

1 278 (100.00%) Data Science
2 142 (51.08%) Machine Learning
3 114 (41.01%) AI
4 112 (40.29%) Python
5 78 (28.06%) Analytics
6 71 (25.54%) Mentoring
7 61 (21.94%) SQL
8 46 (16.55%) Degree
9 39 (14.03%) MLOps
9 39 (14.03%) Roadmaps
10 38 (13.67%) CI/CD
11 35 (12.59%) Software Engineering
12 34 (12.23%) LLM
12 34 (12.23%) PyTorch
13 33 (11.87%) Data Engineering
14 32 (11.51%) Actionable Insight
14 32 (11.51%) Statistics
15 31 (11.15%) AWS
15 31 (11.15%) TensorFlow
16 28 (10.07%) Azure
17 27 (9.71%) Natural Language Processing
17 27 (9.71%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 26 (9.35%) Decision-Making
18 26 (9.35%) Master's Degree
18 26 (9.35%) PhD
18 26 (9.35%) Project Management
19 25 (8.99%) Deep Learning
20 24 (8.63%) GCP
20 24 (8.63%) Hugging Face
20 24 (8.63%) Mathematics

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 22 (7.91%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.08%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.44%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.72%) SPSS
3 1 (0.36%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 31 (11.15%) AWS
2 28 (10.07%) Azure
3 24 (8.63%) GCP
4 12 (4.32%) SaaS
5 10 (3.60%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.16%) Dataform
6 6 (2.16%) dbt
7 5 (1.80%) Amazon S3
7 5 (1.80%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (1.80%) Serverless
8 4 (1.44%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.72%) Azure Machine Learning
9 2 (0.72%) Salesforce Service Cloud
10 1 (0.36%) Anthropic Claude
10 1 (0.36%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.36%) GitHub
10 1 (0.36%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (0.36%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.08%) Broadband
2 1 (0.36%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (6.83%) Amazon Redshift
2 15 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.60%) Power BI
3 10 (3.60%) Tableau
4 6 (2.16%) Looker
4 6 (2.16%) Metabase
5 4 (1.44%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.08%) Amazon Athena
7 2 (0.72%) Apache Iceberg
7 2 (0.72%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.72%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.72%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.72%) Flink
7 2 (0.72%) Redis
8 1 (0.36%) Big Data
8 1 (0.36%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 16 (5.76%) Git
2 4 (1.44%) MLflow
3 1 (0.36%) JIRA
General
1 90 (32.37%) Finance
2 33 (11.87%) Banking
3 31 (11.15%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (7.55%) Social Skills
5 19 (6.83%) Public Sector
6 18 (6.47%) Financial Institution
7 17 (6.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 11 (3.96%) Marketing
9 9 (3.24%) Retail
10 6 (2.16%) Wearables
11 5 (1.80%) Automotive
11 5 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.80%) Law
11 5 (1.80%) Retail Banking
12 4 (1.44%) Games
13 3 (1.08%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (1.08%) Publishing
14 2 (0.72%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.36%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (12.23%) PyTorch
2 31 (11.15%) TensorFlow
3 24 (8.63%) Hugging Face
4 18 (6.47%) scikit-learn
5 17 (6.12%) SpaCy
6 12 (4.32%) XGBoost
7 11 (3.96%) Pandas
8 9 (3.24%) NumPy
9 8 (2.88%) LangChain
10 5 (1.80%) LlamaIndex
10 5 (1.80%) PySpark
11 2 (0.72%) Kafka
11 2 (0.72%) LangGraph
12 1 (0.36%) Kaldi
12 1 (0.36%) Keras
12 1 (0.36%) LightGBM
12 1 (0.36%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 17 (6.12%) e-Learning
2 11 (3.96%) Algorithms
3 8 (2.88%) AI Agents
4 7 (2.52%) Cloud Native
5 6 (2.16%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.44%) Life Science
7 2 (0.72%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 1 (0.36%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.36%) Clustering
8 1 (0.36%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.36%) FMCG
8 1 (0.36%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 278 (100.00%) Data Science
2 142 (51.08%) Machine Learning
3 114 (41.01%) AI
4 78 (28.06%) Analytics
5 71 (25.54%) Mentoring
6 39 (14.03%) MLOps
6 39 (14.03%) Roadmaps
7 38 (13.67%) CI/CD
8 35 (12.59%) Software Engineering
9 34 (12.23%) LLM
10 33 (11.87%) Data Engineering
11 32 (11.51%) Actionable Insight
11 32 (11.51%) Statistics
12 27 (9.71%) Natural Language Processing
12 27 (9.71%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
13 26 (9.35%) Decision-Making
13 26 (9.35%) Project Management
14 25 (8.99%) Deep Learning
15 24 (8.63%) Mathematics
16 23 (8.27%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 112 (40.29%) Python
2 61 (21.94%) SQL
3 17 (6.12%) R
4 6 (2.16%) Julia
Qualifications
1 46 (16.55%) Degree
2 26 (9.35%) Master's Degree
2 26 (9.35%) PhD
3 16 (5.76%) Security Cleared
4 9 (3.24%) DV Cleared
5 6 (2.16%) DBS Check
6 3 (1.08%) SC Cleared
7 1 (0.36%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.91%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.80%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.80%) GDPR
3 3 (1.08%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.72%) QA
5 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 10 (3.60%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (3.60%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 8 (2.88%) Databricks
2 6 (2.16%) Google
3 4 (1.44%) LexisNexis
4 2 (0.72%) Microsoft
4 2 (0.72%) OpenAI
4 2 (0.72%) Oracle
4 2 (0.72%) PeopleSoft
4 2 (0.72%) Salesforce
5 1 (0.36%) Cognizant
5 1 (0.36%) Dataiku
5 1 (0.36%) Workday