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 20 August 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 499 629 622
Rank change year-on-year +130 -7 +71
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 301 63 183
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.28% 0.13% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.30% 0.14% 0.23%
Number of salaries quoted 185 30 74
10th Percentile £65,000 £48,525 £49,613
25th Percentile £75,000 £71,875 £57,646
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £85,000 £70,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% +21.43% -4.83%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £88,125
90th Percentile - £97,500 £113,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £85,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -5.88% +30.77% -

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 101,050 44,873 78,946
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.99% 89.93% 95.07%
Number of salaries quoted 69,068 26,506 52,274
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £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 £75,000 £75,000 £72,250
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,171 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.77% -4.00% -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 20 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 20 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 +129 283 £90,000 +5.88% 91
London +59 148 £95,000 +11.76% 65
UK excluding London +38 146 £80,000 -5.88% 47
Work from Home +52 99 £75,026 -11.73% 32
North of England +21 58 £81,887 -0.74% 6
North West +21 38 £80,000 -3.03% 1
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 3
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 2
South East -17 17 £90,000 - 26
Yorkshire - 16 £83,774 - 5
South West -60 14 £66,748 -21.47% 4
Wales -55 8 £100,000 +17.65%
East of England - 7 £86,725 -
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 1
North East - 4 £91,887 -
Northern Ireland - 4 £90,000 - 7
Scotland -3 2 £75,013 +7.16% 1

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 301 (100.00%) Data Science
2 154 (51.16%) Machine Learning
3 121 (40.20%) AI
4 116 (38.54%) Python
5 85 (28.24%) Analytics
6 68 (22.59%) Mentoring
7 59 (19.60%) SQL
8 47 (15.61%) Degree
9 44 (14.62%) CI/CD
10 42 (13.95%) MLOps
11 40 (13.29%) Roadmaps
12 37 (12.29%) LLM
12 37 (12.29%) Software Engineering
13 36 (11.96%) Actionable Insight
13 36 (11.96%) Statistics
14 35 (11.63%) Data Engineering
15 34 (11.30%) AWS
16 32 (10.63%) Natural Language Processing
16 32 (10.63%) PyTorch
17 31 (10.30%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 30 (9.97%) Azure
19 29 (9.63%) Decision-Making
19 29 (9.63%) Master's Degree
19 29 (9.63%) TensorFlow
20 28 (9.30%) Apache Spark
21 27 (8.97%) PhD
22 26 (8.64%) Deep Learning
22 26 (8.64%) Generative AI
22 26 (8.64%) Project Management
23 25 (8.31%) GCP

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 28 (9.30%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.00%) SAS
3 1 (0.33%) Apache
Applications
1 4 (1.33%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.66%) SPSS
3 1 (0.33%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 34 (11.30%) AWS
2 30 (9.97%) Azure
3 25 (8.31%) GCP
4 12 (3.99%) SaaS
5 10 (3.32%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.99%) Amazon S3
6 6 (1.99%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (1.99%) Dataform
6 6 (1.99%) dbt
6 6 (1.99%) Serverless
7 5 (1.66%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (1.66%) Azure Machine Learning
8 3 (1.00%) Salesforce Service Cloud
8 3 (1.00%) Snowflake
9 2 (0.66%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (0.66%) Azure AI
9 2 (0.66%) Google Gemini
10 1 (0.33%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.33%) GitHub
10 1 (0.33%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.00%) Broadband
2 1 (0.33%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (7.31%) Amazon Redshift
2 16 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.32%) Power BI
3 10 (3.32%) Tableau
4 6 (1.99%) Looker
4 6 (1.99%) Metabase
5 5 (1.66%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.00%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.00%) Apache Iceberg
6 3 (1.00%) Delta Lake
6 3 (1.00%) Flink
6 3 (1.00%) Redis
7 2 (0.66%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.66%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.33%) Big Data
8 1 (0.33%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 16 (5.32%) Git
2 3 (1.00%) MLflow
3 1 (0.33%) JIRA
General
1 94 (31.23%) Finance
2 39 (12.96%) Banking
3 30 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (8.31%) Social Skills
5 20 (6.64%) Financial Institution
5 20 (6.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 16 (5.32%) Public Sector
7 13 (4.32%) Marketing
7 13 (4.32%) Retail
8 8 (2.66%) Law
9 7 (2.33%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.99%) Wearables
11 5 (1.66%) Automotive
11 5 (1.66%) Retail Banking
12 4 (1.33%) Games
13 3 (1.00%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (1.00%) Publishing
14 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.33%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.63%) PyTorch
2 29 (9.63%) TensorFlow
3 24 (7.97%) Hugging Face
4 19 (6.31%) SpaCy
5 17 (5.65%) scikit-learn
6 12 (3.99%) Pandas
7 11 (3.65%) XGBoost
8 10 (3.32%) NumPy
9 9 (2.99%) LangChain
10 6 (1.99%) PySpark
11 5 (1.66%) LlamaIndex
12 4 (1.33%) LangGraph
13 3 (1.00%) Kafka
14 1 (0.33%) Kaldi
14 1 (0.33%) Keras
14 1 (0.33%) LightGBM
14 1 (0.33%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.31%) e-Learning
2 11 (3.65%) AI Agents
2 11 (3.65%) Algorithms
3 8 (2.66%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.33%) Credit Risk
5 4 (1.33%) Life Science
6 3 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.66%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.33%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.33%) Clustering
8 1 (0.33%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.33%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 301 (100.00%) Data Science
2 154 (51.16%) Machine Learning
3 121 (40.20%) AI
4 85 (28.24%) Analytics
5 68 (22.59%) Mentoring
6 44 (14.62%) CI/CD
7 42 (13.95%) MLOps
8 40 (13.29%) Roadmaps
9 37 (12.29%) LLM
9 37 (12.29%) Software Engineering
10 36 (11.96%) Actionable Insight
10 36 (11.96%) Statistics
11 35 (11.63%) Data Engineering
12 32 (10.63%) Natural Language Processing
13 31 (10.30%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 29 (9.63%) Decision-Making
15 26 (8.64%) Deep Learning
15 26 (8.64%) Generative AI
15 26 (8.64%) Project Management
16 24 (7.97%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 116 (38.54%) Python
2 59 (19.60%) SQL
3 13 (4.32%) R
4 6 (1.99%) Julia
Qualifications
1 47 (15.61%) Degree
2 29 (9.63%) Master's Degree
3 27 (8.97%) PhD
4 15 (4.98%) Security Cleared
5 7 (2.33%) DV Cleared
6 6 (1.99%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.00%) SC Cleared
8 2 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.66%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.33%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.64%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.66%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.66%) GDPR
3 4 (1.33%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 2 (0.66%) QA
System Software
1 9 (2.99%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (2.99%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 14 (4.65%) Databricks
2 7 (2.33%) Google
3 6 (1.99%) LexisNexis
4 5 (1.66%) Microsoft
5 3 (1.00%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.00%) Oracle
5 3 (1.00%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (1.00%) Salesforce
5 3 (1.00%) Workday
6 1 (0.33%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.33%) Dataiku