Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,000 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 29 May 2026.

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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 532 539 691
Rank change year-on-year +7 +152 +129
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 207 112 210
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.26% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.24% 0.29% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 139 42 117
10th Percentile £59,617 £53,750 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £66,250 £66,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £77,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.23% -3.13% +18.52%
75th Percentile £95,000 £90,000 £92,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,625 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £70,000 £76,250
% change year-on-year +7.14% -8.20% +17.31%

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 87,064 38,294 94,653
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.44% 89.31% 94.72%
Number of salaries quoted 57,954 21,519 69,253
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £40,000 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £57,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year -1.90% +1.93% -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 29 May 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Data Scientist in the UK

Senior Data Scientist
Top 15 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 29 May 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 +40 202 £80,000 - 76
London +36 105 £90,000 +5.88% 54
UK excluding London -13 99 £75,000 +7.14% 36
Work from Home +36 75 £70,000 -4.76% 27
North of England -12 40 £75,000 +17.19% 9
North West - 32 £75,000 - 8
Midlands -6 28 £75,000 +30.43% 5
East Midlands - 23 £75,000 - 4
South West -74 11 £58,497 -18.74% 2
East of England - 10 £86,725 - 1
South East -24 7 £40,000 - 18
West Midlands -33 5 £75,000 +30.43% 1
Yorkshire -55 4 £66,720 +4.25% 1
North East - 4 £83,360 -
Northern Ireland - 3 - -

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

For the 6 months to 29 May 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.

1 207 (100.00%) Data Science
2 98 (47.34%) Machine Learning
3 88 (42.51%) Python
4 77 (37.20%) AI
5 45 (21.74%) Mentoring
6 41 (19.81%) SQL
7 38 (18.36%) Analytics
8 34 (16.43%) Degree
9 33 (15.94%) Statistics
10 29 (14.01%) LLM
11 26 (12.56%) Roadmaps
11 26 (12.56%) Software Engineering
12 25 (12.08%) PyTorch
13 24 (11.59%) TensorFlow
14 23 (11.11%) Mathematics
14 23 (11.11%) MLOps
14 23 (11.11%) Security Cleared
15 22 (10.63%) CI/CD
15 22 (10.63%) PhD
16 20 (9.66%) Actionable Insight
17 19 (9.18%) Azure
17 19 (9.18%) Deep Learning
17 19 (9.18%) Generative AI
17 19 (9.18%) Visualisation
18 18 (8.70%) Project Management
18 18 (8.70%) Technical Leadership
19 17 (8.21%) AWS
19 17 (8.21%) Data Engineering
19 17 (8.21%) DV Cleared
19 17 (8.21%) Hugging Face

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 10 (4.83%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.45%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (1.93%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.97%) SPSS
3 1 (0.48%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 19 (9.18%) Azure
2 17 (8.21%) AWS
3 13 (6.28%) GCP
4 9 (4.35%) Power Platform
5 6 (2.90%) Dataform
5 6 (2.90%) dbt
5 6 (2.90%) SaaS
6 3 (1.45%) Amazon S3
6 3 (1.45%) Amazon SageMaker
6 3 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
6 3 (1.45%) Serverless
6 3 (1.45%) Snowflake
7 1 (0.48%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (0.48%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.93%) Broadband
2 1 (0.48%) 5G
2 1 (0.48%) LTE
2 1 (0.48%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.48%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.35%) Power BI
1 9 (4.35%) Tableau
2 8 (3.86%) Amazon Redshift
3 6 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (2.90%) Looker
3 6 (2.90%) Metabase
4 3 (1.45%) Amazon Athena
4 3 (1.45%) Big Data
5 2 (0.97%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.48%) BigQuery
6 1 (0.48%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 13 (6.28%) Git
2 3 (1.45%) MLflow
3 1 (0.48%) JIRA
General
1 51 (24.64%) Finance
2 24 (11.59%) Analytical Skills
3 21 (10.14%) Social Skills
4 19 (9.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 13 (6.28%) Banking
6 10 (4.83%) Financial Institution
7 9 (4.35%) Marketing
7 9 (4.35%) Public Sector
8 7 (3.38%) Retail
9 5 (2.42%) Automotive
10 4 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (1.93%) Wearables
11 2 (0.97%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.48%) Advertising
12 1 (0.48%) Digital Economy
12 1 (0.48%) Law
12 1 (0.48%) Publishing
12 1 (0.48%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (12.08%) PyTorch
2 24 (11.59%) TensorFlow
3 17 (8.21%) Hugging Face
4 12 (5.80%) scikit-learn
5 8 (3.86%) SpaCy
6 6 (2.90%) Pandas
6 6 (2.90%) PySpark
6 6 (2.90%) XGBoost
7 5 (2.42%) EDI
7 5 (2.42%) NumPy
8 4 (1.93%) LangChain
9 3 (1.45%) LlamaIndex
10 1 (0.48%) Kafka
10 1 (0.48%) Kaldi
10 1 (0.48%) Keras
10 1 (0.48%) LightGBM
10 1 (0.48%) NetworkX
10 1 (0.48%) SciPy
10 1 (0.48%) Streamlit
10 1 (0.48%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 11 (5.31%) Algorithms
2 8 (3.86%) e-Learning
3 6 (2.90%) Product Ownership
4 4 (1.93%) Cloud Native
5 2 (0.97%) AI Agents
6 1 (0.48%) Acoustics
6 1 (0.48%) Clustering
6 1 (0.48%) Data Structures
6 1 (0.48%) Educational Technology
6 1 (0.48%) FPGA
6 1 (0.48%) Life Science
6 1 (0.48%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (100.00%) Data Science
2 98 (47.34%) Machine Learning
3 77 (37.20%) AI
4 45 (21.74%) Mentoring
5 38 (18.36%) Analytics
6 33 (15.94%) Statistics
7 29 (14.01%) LLM
8 26 (12.56%) Roadmaps
8 26 (12.56%) Software Engineering
9 23 (11.11%) Mathematics
9 23 (11.11%) MLOps
10 22 (10.63%) CI/CD
11 20 (9.66%) Actionable Insight
12 19 (9.18%) Deep Learning
12 19 (9.18%) Generative AI
12 19 (9.18%) Visualisation
13 18 (8.70%) Project Management
13 18 (8.70%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (8.21%) Data Engineering
15 16 (7.73%) Natural Language Processing
Programming Languages
1 88 (42.51%) Python
2 41 (19.81%) SQL
3 15 (7.25%) R
4 6 (2.90%) Julia
5 1 (0.48%) C++
Qualifications
1 34 (16.43%) Degree
2 23 (11.11%) Security Cleared
3 22 (10.63%) PhD
4 17 (8.21%) DV Cleared
5 15 (7.25%) Master's Degree
6 7 (3.38%) SC Cleared
7 6 (2.90%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.80%) Data Quality
2 2 (0.97%) QA
System Software
1 8 (3.86%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (3.86%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (2.90%) Microsoft
2 4 (1.93%) Google
3 2 (0.97%) Databricks
4 1 (0.48%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.48%) Dataiku