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 18 February 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 592 567 644
Rank change year-on-year -25 +77 +176
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 80 114 154
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.23% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.25% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 52 30 104
10th Percentile £55,155 £59,375 £53,750
25th Percentile £59,904 £62,750 £68,718
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £71,991 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.13% -10.01% +14.29%
75th Percentile £92,500 £85,188 £96,539
90th Percentile £100,000 £106,250 £112,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £70,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -12.26% -6.67% +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 61,931 45,044 70,794
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.23% 91.56% 94.85%
Number of salaries quoted 38,987 23,380 55,351
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £39,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -4.76%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 +13 78 £80,000 +11.13% 39
London +38 51 £85,000 +6.25% 28
UK excluding London -29 28 £61,418 -12.26% 22
Work from Home +6 22 £85,000 +18.07% 16
North of England -28 8 £61,418 -4.03% 2
South East +21 7 £40,000 -54.29% 10
North West +11 5 £61,418 - 2
South West -22 5 £58,497 -18.74% 4
East of England +19 4 £100,000 -
Midlands +7 3 £70,000 +21.74% 3
West Midlands +10 2 £75,860 +31.93%
Yorkshire -37 2 £66,720 +4.25%
North East -9 1 £66,720 -
East Midlands - 1 £70,000 - 3
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 18 February 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 80 (100.00%) Data Science
2 40 (50.00%) Machine Learning
2 40 (50.00%) Python
3 35 (43.75%) AI
4 23 (28.75%) Degree
5 21 (26.25%) Analytics
6 17 (21.25%) Mathematics
6 17 (21.25%) Natural Language Processing
6 17 (21.25%) PhD
6 17 (21.25%) Security Cleared
7 16 (20.00%) DV Cleared
8 15 (18.75%) Statistics
9 14 (17.50%) Azure
9 14 (17.50%) Mentoring
10 13 (16.25%) SQL
10 13 (16.25%) Technical Leadership
11 11 (13.75%) Data Analysis
11 11 (13.75%) Generative AI
11 11 (13.75%) Line Management
11 11 (13.75%) MLOps
12 10 (12.50%) AWS
12 10 (12.50%) Computer Science
12 10 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
13 9 (11.25%) CI/CD
13 9 (11.25%) DevOps
13 9 (11.25%) Visualisation
14 8 (10.00%) Data Engineering
14 8 (10.00%) Data Visualisation
14 8 (10.00%) GCP
14 8 (10.00%) Git

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 (8.75%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 14 (17.50%) Azure
2 10 (12.50%) AWS
3 8 (10.00%) GCP
4 3 (3.75%) Power Platform
5 2 (2.50%) Snowflake
6 1 (1.25%) Adobe Analytics
6 1 (1.25%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.25%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (1.25%) dbt
6 1 (1.25%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.00%) Broadband
2 1 (1.25%) LTE
2 1 (1.25%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (1.25%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (7.50%) Amazon Redshift
2 4 (5.00%) Big Data
3 3 (3.75%) Power BI
4 2 (2.50%) Tableau
5 1 (1.25%) Hadoop
5 1 (1.25%) MongoDB
5 1 (1.25%) NoSQL
5 1 (1.25%) Pinecone
5 1 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (1.25%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 8 (10.00%) Git
2 2 (2.50%) MLflow
General
1 13 (16.25%) Finance
2 12 (15.00%) Social Skills
3 11 (13.75%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (8.75%) Financial Institution
4 7 (8.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 6 (7.50%) Banking
6 5 (6.25%) Public Sector
6 5 (6.25%) Retail
7 4 (5.00%) Marketing
8 2 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (1.25%) Advertising
9 1 (1.25%) Digital Economy
9 1 (1.25%) Games
9 1 (1.25%) Law
9 1 (1.25%) Legal
9 1 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.75%) TensorFlow
2 6 (7.50%) SpaCy
3 5 (6.25%) EDI
4 4 (5.00%) PyTorch
5 2 (2.50%) Hugging Face
5 2 (2.50%) LangChain
5 2 (2.50%) NetworkX
5 2 (2.50%) PySpark
5 2 (2.50%) scikit-learn
5 2 (2.50%) Streamlit
6 1 (1.25%) Django
6 1 (1.25%) Faiss
6 1 (1.25%) FastAPI
6 1 (1.25%) GeoPandas
6 1 (1.25%) Kafka
6 1 (1.25%) MapLibre
6 1 (1.25%) NumPy
6 1 (1.25%) PostGIS
6 1 (1.25%) SciPy
6 1 (1.25%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (7.50%) Algorithms
1 6 (7.50%) e-Learning
2 5 (6.25%) Product Ownership
3 2 (2.50%) AI Agents
4 1 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.25%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.25%) Clustering
4 1 (1.25%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.25%) FPGA
4 1 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (1.25%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (100.00%) Data Science
2 40 (50.00%) Machine Learning
3 35 (43.75%) AI
4 21 (26.25%) Analytics
5 17 (21.25%) Mathematics
5 17 (21.25%) Natural Language Processing
6 15 (18.75%) Statistics
7 14 (17.50%) Mentoring
8 13 (16.25%) Technical Leadership
9 11 (13.75%) Data Analysis
9 11 (13.75%) Generative AI
9 11 (13.75%) Line Management
9 11 (13.75%) MLOps
10 10 (12.50%) Computer Science
10 10 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
11 9 (11.25%) CI/CD
11 9 (11.25%) DevOps
11 9 (11.25%) Visualisation
12 8 (10.00%) Data Engineering
12 8 (10.00%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 40 (50.00%) Python
2 13 (16.25%) SQL
3 4 (5.00%) R
4 1 (1.25%) C++
4 1 (1.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 23 (28.75%) Degree
2 17 (21.25%) PhD
2 17 (21.25%) Security Cleared
3 16 (20.00%) DV Cleared
4 8 (10.00%) Master's Degree
5 6 (7.50%) SC Cleared
6 1 (1.25%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.25%) Actionable Recommendations
1 1 (1.25%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (5.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.50%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.25%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (7.50%) Microsoft
2 2 (2.50%) Databricks
3 1 (1.25%) Adobe
3 1 (1.25%) Google
3 1 (1.25%) Mapbox
3 1 (1.25%) Marketo
3 1 (1.25%) Salesforce
3 1 (1.25%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud