Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £90,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 23 September 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 494 623 589
Rank change year-on-year +129 -34 +91
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 345 47 192
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.096% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.11% 0.27%
Number of salaries quoted 208 16 66
10th Percentile £65,000 £78,750 £51,207
25th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £57,646
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -12.50%
75th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £80,938
90th Percentile - £97,500 £108,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £83,774 £85,000 £62,879
% change year-on-year -1.44% +35.18% -10.94%

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 108,680 43,895 71,874
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.13% 89.63% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,405 25,767 42,756
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,250 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.73% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 23 September 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 23 September 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 +138 323 £90,000 +5.88% 357
London +72 169 £95,000 +11.76% 238
UK excluding London +24 166 £83,774 -1.44% 129
Work from Home +40 99 £75,026 -11.73% 158
North of England +4 66 £90,000 +9.09% 29
North West +4 37 £80,000 -3.03% 19
South East -13 36 £90,000 - 30
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 22
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 11
Yorkshire - 25 £90,000 - 9
South West -70 10 £75,000 -11.76% 27
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 8
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 11
Northern Ireland - 5 £90,000 - 4
North East - 4 £91,887 - 1
East of England - 3 £86,725 - 8
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 23 September 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.

1 345 (100.00%) Data Science
2 176 (51.01%) Machine Learning
3 134 (38.84%) AI
4 121 (35.07%) Python
5 98 (28.41%) Analytics
6 69 (20.00%) Mentoring
7 58 (16.81%) SQL
8 53 (15.36%) MLOps
9 51 (14.78%) Degree
10 50 (14.49%) CI/CD
11 43 (12.46%) Roadmaps
12 40 (11.59%) Azure
12 40 (11.59%) Software Engineering
13 38 (11.01%) AWS
14 37 (10.72%) Natural Language Processing
15 36 (10.43%) Actionable Insight
15 36 (10.43%) Data Engineering
15 36 (10.43%) Decision-Making
16 35 (10.14%) Master's Degree
16 35 (10.14%) Statistics
17 33 (9.57%) Apache Spark
17 33 (9.57%) LLM
18 31 (8.99%) GCP
19 30 (8.70%) Generative AI
19 30 (8.70%) PyTorch
20 29 (8.41%) Collaborative Culture
20 29 (8.41%) Predictive Modelling
20 29 (8.41%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
20 29 (8.41%) TensorFlow
21 28 (8.12%) PhD

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 33 (9.57%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.87%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) Apache
4 1 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (1.16%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.58%) SPSS
3 1 (0.29%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 40 (11.59%) Azure
2 38 (11.01%) AWS
3 31 (8.99%) GCP
4 13 (3.77%) SaaS
5 10 (2.90%) Azure Machine Learning
6 5 (1.45%) Amazon S3
6 5 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
6 5 (1.45%) Power Platform
6 5 (1.45%) Serverless
7 4 (1.16%) Amazon SageMaker
7 4 (1.16%) Azure Databricks
8 3 (0.87%) dbt
8 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 3 (0.87%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.58%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (0.58%) Azure AI
9 2 (0.58%) Dataform
9 2 (0.58%) Google Gemini
10 1 (0.29%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.29%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.29%) 5G
1 1 (0.29%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.83%) Amazon Redshift
2 12 (3.48%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.45%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.45%) Power BI
3 5 (1.45%) Tableau
4 4 (1.16%) Flink
5 3 (0.87%) Apache Iceberg
5 3 (0.87%) Delta Lake
5 3 (0.87%) Looker
5 3 (0.87%) Redis
6 2 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.58%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.58%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.58%) Metabase
7 1 (0.29%) Big Data
7 1 (0.29%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 20 (5.80%) Git
2 3 (0.87%) MLflow
3 1 (0.29%) JIRA
General
1 97 (28.12%) Finance
2 43 (12.46%) Banking
3 29 (8.41%) Social Skills
4 25 (7.25%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (7.25%) Financial Institution
5 23 (6.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 18 (5.22%) Public Sector
7 14 (4.06%) Retail
8 10 (2.90%) Marketing
9 9 (2.61%) Law
10 7 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.74%) Games
11 6 (1.74%) Wearables
12 5 (1.45%) Automotive
12 5 (1.45%) Retail Banking
13 3 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.87%) Publishing
14 1 (0.29%) Legal
14 1 (0.29%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.29%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.70%) PyTorch
2 29 (8.41%) TensorFlow
3 24 (6.96%) Hugging Face
3 24 (6.96%) SpaCy
4 14 (4.06%) scikit-learn
5 11 (3.19%) Pandas
6 9 (2.61%) LangChain
6 9 (2.61%) NumPy
6 9 (2.61%) XGBoost
7 8 (2.32%) PySpark
8 5 (1.45%) LlamaIndex
9 4 (1.16%) LangGraph
10 3 (0.87%) Kafka
11 1 (0.29%) Apache Beam
11 1 (0.29%) Kaldi
11 1 (0.29%) Keras
11 1 (0.29%) LightGBM
11 1 (0.29%) Qwen
11 1 (0.29%) Streamlit
11 1 (0.29%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 24 (6.96%) e-Learning
2 14 (4.06%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.19%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.32%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.03%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.16%) Life Science
7 3 (0.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.58%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.29%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.29%) Clustering
9 1 (0.29%) Educational Technology
9 1 (0.29%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 345 (100.00%) Data Science
2 176 (51.01%) Machine Learning
3 134 (38.84%) AI
4 98 (28.41%) Analytics
5 69 (20.00%) Mentoring
6 53 (15.36%) MLOps
7 50 (14.49%) CI/CD
8 43 (12.46%) Roadmaps
9 40 (11.59%) Software Engineering
10 37 (10.72%) Natural Language Processing
11 36 (10.43%) Actionable Insight
11 36 (10.43%) Data Engineering
11 36 (10.43%) Decision-Making
12 35 (10.14%) Statistics
13 33 (9.57%) LLM
14 30 (8.70%) Generative AI
15 29 (8.41%) Collaborative Culture
15 29 (8.41%) Predictive Modelling
15 29 (8.41%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 26 (7.54%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 121 (35.07%) Python
2 58 (16.81%) SQL
3 9 (2.61%) R
4 2 (0.58%) Julia
5 1 (0.29%) Java
5 1 (0.29%) Scala
5 1 (0.29%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 51 (14.78%) Degree
2 35 (10.14%) Master's Degree
3 28 (8.12%) PhD
4 15 (4.35%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.45%) DV Cleared
6 3 (0.87%) SC Cleared
7 2 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.58%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.58%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.29%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (5.51%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.45%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.45%) GDPR
3 4 (1.16%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 42001
5 1 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 10 (2.90%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.90%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (5.22%) Databricks
2 9 (2.61%) LexisNexis
3 8 (2.32%) Google
4 6 (1.74%) Workday
5 5 (1.45%) Microsoft
6 3 (0.87%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.87%) Oracle
6 3 (0.87%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.87%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.29%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.29%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.29%) Mistral
7 1 (0.29%) New Relic
7 1 (0.29%) Splunk