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 27 September 2026.

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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 488 623 588
Rank change year-on-year +135 -35 +82
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 344 45 190
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.29% 0.091% 0.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.10% 0.26%
Number of salaries quoted 202 16 63
10th Percentile £65,000 £78,750 £50,555
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 £83,125
90th Percentile - £97,500 £112,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £83,774 £85,000 £62,879
% change year-on-year -1.44% +35.18% -13.98%

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 109,253 44,520 72,425
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 89.71% 95.27%
Number of salaries quoted 74,753 26,003 42,216
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,750
25th Percentile £40,625 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,589 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.53% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
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 27 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 27 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 +151 322 £90,000 +5.88% 315
London +80 170 £95,000 +11.76% 205
UK excluding London +34 164 £83,774 -1.44% 114
Work from Home +53 99 £75,026 -11.73% 137
North of England +8 64 £90,000 +9.09% 25
South East -11 38 £90,000 - 28
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 20
North West +6 35 £85,000 +3.03% 15
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 11
Yorkshire - 25 £90,000 - 9
South West -76 10 £75,000 -11.76% 19
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 8
Northern Ireland - 5 £90,000 - 6
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 9
North East - 4 £91,887 - 1
Scotland - 2 £75,013 -
East of England - 1 £65,000 - 10

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

For the 6 months to 27 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.

1 344 (100.00%) Data Science
2 176 (51.16%) Machine Learning
3 134 (38.95%) AI
4 119 (34.59%) Python
5 95 (27.62%) Analytics
6 66 (19.19%) Mentoring
7 56 (16.28%) SQL
8 53 (15.41%) MLOps
9 51 (14.83%) Degree
10 48 (13.95%) CI/CD
11 43 (12.50%) Roadmaps
12 40 (11.63%) Azure
12 40 (11.63%) Software Engineering
13 37 (10.76%) Actionable Insight
13 37 (10.76%) AWS
13 37 (10.76%) Natural Language Processing
14 36 (10.47%) Decision-Making
15 35 (10.17%) Master's Degree
16 34 (9.88%) Data Engineering
16 34 (9.88%) Statistics
17 33 (9.59%) Apache Spark
17 33 (9.59%) LLM
18 32 (9.30%) GCP
19 31 (9.01%) Generative AI
20 30 (8.72%) PyTorch
21 29 (8.43%) Collaborative Culture
21 29 (8.43%) Predictive Modelling
21 29 (8.43%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
21 29 (8.43%) TensorFlow
22 28 (8.14%) 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 (9.59%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.87%) Apache
2 3 (0.87%) SAS
3 2 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (1.16%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.58%) SPSS
3 1 (0.29%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 40 (11.63%) Azure
2 37 (10.76%) AWS
3 32 (9.30%) GCP
4 14 (4.07%) SaaS
5 10 (2.91%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.16%) Amazon S3
6 4 (1.16%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (1.16%) Azure Databricks
6 4 (1.16%) Serverless
7 3 (0.87%) Amazon SageMaker
7 3 (0.87%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 3 (0.87%) Snowflake
8 2 (0.58%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (0.58%) Azure AI
8 2 (0.58%) Cloud Composer
8 2 (0.58%) dbt
8 2 (0.58%) Google Gemini
8 2 (0.58%) Power Platform
9 1 (0.29%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.29%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.29%) 5G
1 1 (0.29%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (7.85%) Amazon Redshift
2 10 (2.91%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.45%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.45%) Flink
4 3 (0.87%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (0.87%) BigQuery
4 3 (0.87%) Delta Lake
4 3 (0.87%) Redis
5 2 (0.58%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.58%) Looker
5 2 (0.58%) Power BI
5 2 (0.58%) Tableau
6 1 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.29%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 20 (5.81%) Git
2 3 (0.87%) MLflow
3 1 (0.29%) JIRA
General
1 94 (27.33%) Finance
2 42 (12.21%) Banking
3 28 (8.14%) Social Skills
4 25 (7.27%) Financial Institution
5 23 (6.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 22 (6.40%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (5.23%) Public Sector
8 14 (4.07%) Retail
9 9 (2.62%) Law
9 9 (2.62%) Marketing
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%) Tech for Good
14 1 (0.29%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.72%) PyTorch
2 29 (8.43%) TensorFlow
3 24 (6.98%) Hugging Face
3 24 (6.98%) SpaCy
4 13 (3.78%) scikit-learn
5 10 (2.91%) Pandas
6 9 (2.62%) LangChain
6 9 (2.62%) XGBoost
7 8 (2.33%) NumPy
7 8 (2.33%) PySpark
8 5 (1.45%) LlamaIndex
9 4 (1.16%) LangGraph
10 3 (0.87%) Kafka
11 2 (0.58%) Apache Beam
11 2 (0.58%) Terraform
12 1 (0.29%) Kaldi
12 1 (0.29%) Keras
12 1 (0.29%) LightGBM
12 1 (0.29%) Qwen
12 1 (0.29%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 24 (6.98%) e-Learning
2 14 (4.07%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.20%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.33%) 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
1 344 (100.00%) Data Science
2 176 (51.16%) Machine Learning
3 134 (38.95%) AI
4 95 (27.62%) Analytics
5 66 (19.19%) Mentoring
6 53 (15.41%) MLOps
7 48 (13.95%) CI/CD
8 43 (12.50%) Roadmaps
9 40 (11.63%) Software Engineering
10 37 (10.76%) Actionable Insight
10 37 (10.76%) Natural Language Processing
11 36 (10.47%) Decision-Making
12 34 (9.88%) Data Engineering
12 34 (9.88%) Statistics
13 33 (9.59%) LLM
14 31 (9.01%) Generative AI
15 29 (8.43%) Collaborative Culture
15 29 (8.43%) Predictive Modelling
15 29 (8.43%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
16 26 (7.56%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 119 (34.59%) Python
2 56 (16.28%) SQL
3 7 (2.03%) R
4 2 (0.58%) Java
4 2 (0.58%) Scala
4 2 (0.58%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 51 (14.83%) Degree
2 35 (10.17%) Master's Degree
3 28 (8.14%) PhD
4 15 (4.36%) 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%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.29%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.94%) 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
System Software
1 11 (3.20%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (3.20%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (5.23%) Databricks
2 9 (2.62%) Google
2 9 (2.62%) LexisNexis
3 6 (1.74%) Workday
4 5 (1.45%) Microsoft
5 3 (0.87%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.87%) Oracle
5 3 (0.87%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (0.87%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.58%) New Relic
6 2 (0.58%) Splunk
7 1 (0.29%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.29%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.29%) Mistral