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 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 530 595 657
Rank change year-on-year +65 +62 +98
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 229 94 196
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.19% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% 0.21% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 143 39 91
10th Percentile £63,000 £48,300 £50,000
25th Percentile £74,566 £70,000 £57,646
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £85,000 £85,000 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year - +13.33% +11.11%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £85,625
90th Percentile - £99,250 £111,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £80,000 £70,000
% change year-on-year -6.25% +14.29% +7.69%

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 94,464 44,263 88,687
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.30% 90.01% 94.75%
Number of salaries quoted 64,822 26,191 62,318
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £29,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £54,000
Median % change year-on-year - +1.85% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,183
90th Percentile £96,000 £96,250 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 22 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 22 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 +74 220 £83,774 -1.44% 133
UK excluding London -5 115 £75,000 -6.25% 63
London +42 111 £95,000 +11.76% 85
Work from Home +23 87 £75,000 -11.76% 74
North of England +12 48 £77,500 +21.09% 21
Midlands +11 36 £75,000 - 5
North West +27 35 £77,500 -6.06% 11
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 -
South West -80 13 £58,497 -31.18% 6
Yorkshire -35 8 £75,000 +17.19% 8
East of England - 7 £86,725 - 2
North East - 5 £83,774 - 2
West Midlands -13 4 £70,860 - 5
South East -24 4 - - 18
Wales -54 4 £102,500 +20.59% 6
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 22 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.

1 229 (100.00%) Data Science
2 115 (50.22%) Machine Learning
3 97 (42.36%) Python
4 86 (37.55%) AI
5 67 (29.26%) Mentoring
6 54 (23.58%) SQL
7 52 (22.71%) Analytics
8 39 (17.03%) Degree
8 39 (17.03%) Roadmaps
9 37 (16.16%) MLOps
10 34 (14.85%) Software Engineering
11 33 (14.41%) PyTorch
12 31 (13.54%) CI/CD
12 31 (13.54%) TensorFlow
13 28 (12.23%) LLM
13 28 (12.23%) Statistics
14 26 (11.35%) Actionable Insight
14 26 (11.35%) AWS
14 26 (11.35%) Data Engineering
15 25 (10.92%) Project Management
16 24 (10.48%) Azure
16 24 (10.48%) Deep Learning
16 24 (10.48%) Hugging Face
17 23 (10.04%) Decision-Making
17 23 (10.04%) Master's Degree
18 22 (9.61%) GCP
18 22 (9.61%) PhD
19 21 (9.17%) Natural Language Processing
20 20 (8.73%) Data Quality
21 19 (8.30%) 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 17 (7.42%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.31%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.75%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.87%) SPSS
3 1 (0.44%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 26 (11.35%) AWS
2 24 (10.48%) Azure
3 22 (9.61%) GCP
4 10 (4.37%) Power Platform
4 10 (4.37%) SaaS
5 6 (2.62%) Dataform
5 6 (2.62%) dbt
6 5 (2.18%) Amazon SageMaker
7 3 (1.31%) Amazon S3
7 3 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (1.31%) Serverless
7 3 (1.31%) Snowflake
8 1 (0.44%) Azure Data Factory
8 1 (0.44%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.31%) Broadband
2 1 (0.44%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (6.55%) Amazon Redshift
2 11 (4.80%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (4.37%) Power BI
3 10 (4.37%) Tableau
4 6 (2.62%) Looker
4 6 (2.62%) Metabase
5 3 (1.31%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.87%) Big Data
6 2 (0.87%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.44%) BigQuery
7 1 (0.44%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.44%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.44%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 14 (6.11%) Git
2 3 (1.31%) MLflow
3 1 (0.44%) JIRA
General
1 72 (31.44%) Finance
2 28 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
3 26 (11.35%) Banking
4 20 (8.73%) Social Skills
5 16 (6.99%) Financial Institution
6 15 (6.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (5.68%) Public Sector
8 8 (3.49%) Marketing
9 6 (2.62%) Wearables
10 5 (2.18%) Automotive
10 5 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.75%) Retail Banking
12 3 (1.31%) Retail
13 2 (0.87%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.87%) Games
13 2 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.87%) Publishing
14 1 (0.44%) Law
14 1 (0.44%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (14.41%) PyTorch
2 31 (13.54%) TensorFlow
3 24 (10.48%) Hugging Face
4 16 (6.99%) scikit-learn
5 15 (6.55%) SpaCy
6 10 (4.37%) Pandas
6 10 (4.37%) XGBoost
7 8 (3.49%) NumPy
8 6 (2.62%) LangChain
8 6 (2.62%) PySpark
9 5 (2.18%) LlamaIndex
10 1 (0.44%) Kaldi
10 1 (0.44%) Keras
10 1 (0.44%) LightGBM
10 1 (0.44%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 15 (6.55%) e-Learning
2 10 (4.37%) Algorithms
3 6 (2.62%) Cloud Native
4 5 (2.18%) AI Agents
4 5 (2.18%) Credit Risk
5 3 (1.31%) Life Science
6 1 (0.44%) Acoustics
6 1 (0.44%) Clustering
6 1 (0.44%) Educational Technology
6 1 (0.44%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 229 (100.00%) Data Science
2 115 (50.22%) Machine Learning
3 86 (37.55%) AI
4 67 (29.26%) Mentoring
5 52 (22.71%) Analytics
6 39 (17.03%) Roadmaps
7 37 (16.16%) MLOps
8 34 (14.85%) Software Engineering
9 31 (13.54%) CI/CD
10 28 (12.23%) LLM
10 28 (12.23%) Statistics
11 26 (11.35%) Actionable Insight
11 26 (11.35%) Data Engineering
12 25 (10.92%) Project Management
13 24 (10.48%) Deep Learning
14 23 (10.04%) Decision-Making
15 21 (9.17%) Natural Language Processing
16 19 (8.30%) Mathematics
17 18 (7.86%) Generative AI
18 17 (7.42%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 97 (42.36%) Python
2 54 (23.58%) SQL
3 16 (6.99%) R
4 6 (2.62%) Julia
Qualifications
1 39 (17.03%) Degree
2 23 (10.04%) Master's Degree
3 22 (9.61%) PhD
4 10 (4.37%) Security Cleared
5 6 (2.62%) DBS Check
6 4 (1.75%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.87%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (8.73%) Data Quality
2 4 (1.75%) EU AI Act
2 4 (1.75%) GDPR
3 2 (0.87%) QA
System Software
1 10 (4.37%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (4.37%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 4 (1.75%) Databricks
1 4 (1.75%) Google
2 1 (0.44%) Cognizant
2 1 (0.44%) Dataiku