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 2 October 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 485 635 605
Rank change year-on-year +150 -30 +67
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 361 43 180
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.087% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.097% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 206 15 61
10th Percentile £65,000 £78,500 £52,293
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 £85,000
90th Percentile - £97,500 £115,000
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 109,690 44,526 71,445
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.87% 89.77% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,912 25,656 41,522
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,750
25th Percentile £40,825 £36,250 £40,013
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,600 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,000 £73,775 £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 2 October 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 2 October 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 +148 339 £90,000 +5.88% 362
London +86 179 £95,000 +8.57% 242
UK excluding London +32 172 £83,774 -1.44% 132
Work from Home +58 103 £75,000 -11.76% 151
North of England -2 65 £90,000 +9.09% 24
South East -8 42 £90,000 - 30
Midlands - 37 £75,000 - 19
North West +1 36 £90,000 +9.09% 14
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 - 8
Yorkshire - 25 £90,000 - 9
South West -61 12 £75,000 -11.76% 26
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 13
Northern Ireland - 5 £90,000 - 7
West Midlands - 5 £75,000 - 11
North East - 4 £91,887 - 1
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 3
East of England - 1 £65,000 - 10

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

For the 6 months to 2 October 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.

1 361 (100.00%) Data Science
2 187 (51.80%) Machine Learning
3 142 (39.34%) AI
4 125 (34.63%) Python
5 99 (27.42%) Analytics
6 69 (19.11%) Mentoring
7 60 (16.62%) SQL
8 58 (16.07%) MLOps
9 55 (15.24%) Degree
10 49 (13.57%) CI/CD
11 44 (12.19%) Roadmaps
12 43 (11.91%) Azure
12 43 (11.91%) Software Engineering
13 40 (11.08%) Natural Language Processing
14 39 (10.80%) Actionable Insight
15 38 (10.53%) AWS
16 37 (10.25%) Decision-Making
17 36 (9.97%) Master's Degree
18 35 (9.70%) Data Engineering
18 35 (9.70%) Generative AI
19 34 (9.42%) Apache Spark
19 34 (9.42%) LLM
19 34 (9.42%) Statistics
20 33 (9.14%) GCP
21 32 (8.86%) Predictive Modelling
22 31 (8.59%) Collaborative Culture
22 31 (8.59%) PhD
22 31 (8.59%) PyTorch
23 30 (8.31%) TensorFlow
24 29 (8.03%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation

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 34 (9.42%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.83%) Apache
2 3 (0.83%) SAS
3 2 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (1.11%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.55%) SPSS
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.28%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 43 (11.91%) Azure
2 38 (10.53%) AWS
3 33 (9.14%) GCP
4 14 (3.88%) SaaS
5 12 (3.32%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.11%) Amazon S3
6 4 (1.11%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (1.11%) Azure Databricks
6 4 (1.11%) Serverless
7 3 (0.83%) Amazon SageMaker
7 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 3 (0.83%) Snowflake
8 2 (0.55%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (0.55%) Azure AI
8 2 (0.55%) Cloud Composer
8 2 (0.55%) dbt
8 2 (0.55%) Google Gemini
8 2 (0.55%) Power Platform
9 1 (0.28%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.28%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.28%) 5G
1 1 (0.28%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (7.76%) Amazon Redshift
2 10 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.39%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.39%) Flink
4 3 (0.83%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (0.83%) BigQuery
4 3 (0.83%) Delta Lake
4 3 (0.83%) Redis
5 2 (0.55%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.55%) Looker
5 2 (0.55%) Power BI
5 2 (0.55%) Tableau
6 1 (0.28%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.28%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 21 (5.82%) Git
2 3 (0.83%) MLflow
3 1 (0.28%) JIRA
General
1 97 (26.87%) Finance
2 43 (11.91%) Banking
3 28 (7.76%) Social Skills
4 27 (7.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 26 (7.20%) Financial Institution
6 24 (6.65%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (4.99%) Public Sector
8 15 (4.16%) Retail
9 9 (2.49%) Law
9 9 (2.49%) Marketing
10 8 (2.22%) Games
11 7 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.66%) Wearables
13 5 (1.39%) Automotive
13 5 (1.39%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.83%) Publishing
15 1 (0.28%) Legal
15 1 (0.28%) Tech for Good
15 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (8.59%) PyTorch
2 30 (8.31%) TensorFlow
3 25 (6.93%) Hugging Face
3 25 (6.93%) SpaCy
4 13 (3.60%) scikit-learn
5 10 (2.77%) Pandas
6 9 (2.49%) LangChain
6 9 (2.49%) XGBoost
7 8 (2.22%) NumPy
7 8 (2.22%) PySpark
8 5 (1.39%) LlamaIndex
9 4 (1.11%) LangGraph
10 3 (0.83%) Kafka
11 2 (0.55%) Apache Beam
11 2 (0.55%) Terraform
12 1 (0.28%) Kaldi
12 1 (0.28%) Keras
12 1 (0.28%) LightGBM
12 1 (0.28%) Qwen
12 1 (0.28%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.93%) e-Learning
2 15 (4.16%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.05%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.22%) Cloud Native
5 7 (1.94%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.11%) Life Science
7 3 (0.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.55%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.55%) Blog
8 2 (0.55%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.28%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.28%) Clustering
9 1 (0.28%) Educational Technology
9 1 (0.28%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (100.00%) Data Science
2 187 (51.80%) Machine Learning
3 142 (39.34%) AI
4 99 (27.42%) Analytics
5 69 (19.11%) Mentoring
6 58 (16.07%) MLOps
7 49 (13.57%) CI/CD
8 44 (12.19%) Roadmaps
9 43 (11.91%) Software Engineering
10 40 (11.08%) Natural Language Processing
11 39 (10.80%) Actionable Insight
12 37 (10.25%) Decision-Making
13 35 (9.70%) Data Engineering
13 35 (9.70%) Generative AI
14 34 (9.42%) LLM
14 34 (9.42%) Statistics
15 32 (8.86%) Predictive Modelling
16 31 (8.59%) Collaborative Culture
17 29 (8.03%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
18 27 (7.48%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 125 (34.63%) Python
2 60 (16.62%) SQL
3 7 (1.94%) R
4 2 (0.55%) Java
4 2 (0.55%) Scala
4 2 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 55 (15.24%) Degree
2 36 (9.97%) Master's Degree
3 31 (8.59%) PhD
4 16 (4.43%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.39%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.11%) SC Cleared
7 3 (0.83%) Numerate Degree
8 2 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.71%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.39%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (1.39%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.39%) GDPR
3 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 1 (0.28%) QA
System Software
1 12 (3.32%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (3.05%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (4.99%) Databricks
2 9 (2.49%) Google
2 9 (2.49%) LexisNexis
3 6 (1.66%) Microsoft
3 6 (1.66%) Workday
4 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
4 3 (0.83%) Oracle
4 3 (0.83%) PeopleSoft
4 3 (0.83%) Salesforce
5 2 (0.55%) New Relic
5 2 (0.55%) Splunk
6 1 (0.28%) Cognizant
6 1 (0.28%) Dataiku
6 1 (0.28%) Mistral