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 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 495 631 600
Rank change year-on-year +136 -31 +73
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 324 50 196
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.10% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.11% 0.26%
Number of salaries quoted 201 22 76
10th Percentile £65,000 £70,750 £49,758
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% -6.67%
75th Percentile £100,000 £94,063 £86,875
90th Percentile - £97,500 £113,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £83,774 £85,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -1.44% +30.77% -1.57%

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 103,497 43,997 75,693
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.82% 89.68% 95.22%
Number of salaries quoted 71,228 25,950 47,905
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,169 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £74,258 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £92,159
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 4 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 4 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 +150 304 £90,000 +5.88% 308
London +80 159 £95,000 +11.76% 223
UK excluding London +39 157 £83,774 -1.44% 104
Work from Home +40 99 £75,026 -11.73% 122
North of England +7 66 £83,774 +1.54% 26
North West +18 38 £80,000 -3.03% 15
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 15
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 5
Yorkshire - 24 £90,000 - 8
South East -22 23 £90,000 - 35
South West -67 10 £75,000 -11.76% 7
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 4
East of England - 7 £86,725 - 9
Northern Ireland - 5 £90,000 - 4
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 10
North East - 4 £91,887 - 3
Scotland +7 2 £75,013 +7.16% 4

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 324 (100.00%) Data Science
2 161 (49.69%) Machine Learning
3 127 (39.20%) AI
4 119 (36.73%) Python
5 91 (28.09%) Analytics
6 70 (21.60%) Mentoring
7 60 (18.52%) SQL
8 48 (14.81%) CI/CD
8 48 (14.81%) Degree
9 45 (13.89%) MLOps
10 41 (12.65%) Roadmaps
11 38 (11.73%) Software Engineering
12 37 (11.42%) Data Engineering
12 37 (11.42%) Statistics
13 36 (11.11%) Actionable Insight
13 36 (11.11%) AWS
13 36 (11.11%) LLM
14 34 (10.49%) Natural Language Processing
15 33 (10.19%) Azure
16 32 (9.88%) Decision-Making
16 32 (9.88%) Master's Degree
16 32 (9.88%) PyTorch
17 31 (9.57%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 30 (9.26%) Apache Spark
19 29 (8.95%) TensorFlow
20 27 (8.33%) GCP
20 27 (8.33%) PhD
21 26 (8.02%) Collaborative Culture
21 26 (8.02%) Deep Learning
21 26 (8.02%) Generative AI

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 30 (9.26%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.93%) SAS
3 1 (0.31%) Apache
Applications
1 4 (1.23%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.62%) SPSS
3 1 (0.31%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 36 (11.11%) AWS
2 33 (10.19%) Azure
3 27 (8.33%) GCP
4 12 (3.70%) SaaS
5 10 (3.09%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.85%) Amazon S3
6 6 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (1.85%) Azure Machine Learning
6 6 (1.85%) Dataform
6 6 (1.85%) dbt
6 6 (1.85%) Serverless
7 5 (1.54%) Amazon SageMaker
8 3 (0.93%) Azure Databricks
8 3 (0.93%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 3 (0.93%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.62%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (0.62%) Azure AI
9 2 (0.62%) Google Gemini
10 1 (0.31%) GitHub
10 1 (0.31%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.93%) Broadband
2 1 (0.31%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.41%) Amazon Redshift
2 16 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.09%) Power BI
3 10 (3.09%) Tableau
4 6 (1.85%) Looker
4 6 (1.85%) Metabase
5 5 (1.54%) Data Lake
6 3 (0.93%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.93%) Apache Iceberg
6 3 (0.93%) Delta Lake
6 3 (0.93%) Flink
6 3 (0.93%) Redis
7 2 (0.62%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.62%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.31%) Big Data
8 1 (0.31%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 17 (5.25%) Git
2 3 (0.93%) MLflow
3 1 (0.31%) JIRA
General
1 96 (29.63%) Finance
2 41 (12.65%) Banking
3 31 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (8.33%) Social Skills
5 22 (6.79%) Financial Institution
6 20 (6.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 17 (5.25%) Public Sector
8 15 (4.63%) Retail
9 13 (4.01%) Marketing
10 9 (2.78%) Law
11 6 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.85%) Wearables
12 5 (1.54%) Automotive
12 5 (1.54%) Retail Banking
13 4 (1.23%) Games
14 3 (0.93%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.93%) Publishing
15 2 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
16 1 (0.31%) Legal
16 1 (0.31%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (9.88%) PyTorch
2 29 (8.95%) TensorFlow
3 24 (7.41%) Hugging Face
4 21 (6.48%) SpaCy
5 17 (5.25%) scikit-learn
6 12 (3.70%) Pandas
7 11 (3.40%) XGBoost
8 10 (3.09%) NumPy
9 9 (2.78%) LangChain
10 7 (2.16%) PySpark
11 5 (1.54%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (1.23%) LangGraph
13 3 (0.93%) Kafka
14 1 (0.31%) Kaldi
14 1 (0.31%) Keras
14 1 (0.31%) LightGBM
14 1 (0.31%) Qwen
14 1 (0.31%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.48%) e-Learning
2 12 (3.70%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.40%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.47%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.16%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.23%) Life Science
7 3 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.62%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.31%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.31%) Clustering
9 1 (0.31%) Educational Technology
9 1 (0.31%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 324 (100.00%) Data Science
2 161 (49.69%) Machine Learning
3 127 (39.20%) AI
4 91 (28.09%) Analytics
5 70 (21.60%) Mentoring
6 48 (14.81%) CI/CD
7 45 (13.89%) MLOps
8 41 (12.65%) Roadmaps
9 38 (11.73%) Software Engineering
10 37 (11.42%) Data Engineering
10 37 (11.42%) Statistics
11 36 (11.11%) Actionable Insight
11 36 (11.11%) LLM
12 34 (10.49%) Natural Language Processing
13 32 (9.88%) Decision-Making
14 31 (9.57%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
15 26 (8.02%) Collaborative Culture
15 26 (8.02%) Deep Learning
15 26 (8.02%) Generative AI
15 26 (8.02%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 119 (36.73%) Python
2 60 (18.52%) SQL
3 13 (4.01%) R
4 6 (1.85%) Julia
Qualifications
1 48 (14.81%) Degree
2 32 (9.88%) Master's Degree
3 27 (8.33%) PhD
4 14 (4.32%) Security Cleared
5 6 (1.85%) DBS Check
6 5 (1.54%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.93%) SC Cleared
8 2 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.62%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.31%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.54%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.54%) GDPR
3 4 (1.23%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 2 (0.62%) QA
System Software
1 9 (2.78%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (2.78%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 16 (4.94%) Databricks
2 7 (2.16%) Google
3 6 (1.85%) LexisNexis
4 5 (1.54%) Microsoft
4 5 (1.54%) Workday
5 3 (0.93%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.93%) Oracle
5 3 (0.93%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (0.93%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.31%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.31%) Dataiku
6 1 (0.31%) Mistral