Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £80,939 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 22 March 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 599 539 690
Rank change year-on-year -60 +151 +101
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 99 110 162
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.13% 0.26% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.14% 0.29% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 69 43 106
10th Percentile £56,554 £53,750 £50,625
25th Percentile £62,333 £65,000 £68,718
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £75,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.92% -6.25% +14.95%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £96,539
90th Percentile - £104,750 £113,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £66,720 £70,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year -4.69% -9.68% +24.00%

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 70,373 38,297 82,127
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 90.31% 94.61%
Number of salaries quoted 44,805 23,130 62,407
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £28,500
25th Percentile £39,000 £43,290 £38,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,688 £50,000
% change year-on-year -6.87% +7.38% -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 22 March 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 22 March 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 -16 96 £80,939 +4.44% 54
London -7 52 £90,000 +12.50% 38
UK excluding London -45 47 £66,720 -4.69% 23
Work from Home -18 24 £82,500 +10.00% 12
North of England -44 13 £66,720 +4.25% 7
South West -47 11 £58,497 -18.74% 2
North West - 10 £61,418 - 6
East of England - 8 £86,725 - 1
South East -16 7 £40,000 -54.29% 10
Midlands -30 5 £70,000 +21.74% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
East Midlands - 3 £70,000 - 2
West Midlands -2 2 £75,860 +31.93%
Yorkshire -43 2 £66,720 +4.25%
North East - 1 £66,720 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 22 March 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 99 (100.00%) Data Science
2 47 (47.47%) Machine Learning
3 46 (46.46%) AI
4 44 (44.44%) Python
5 23 (23.23%) Analytics
6 21 (21.21%) SQL
7 20 (20.20%) Degree
7 20 (20.20%) Mathematics
8 19 (19.19%) Security Cleared
9 18 (18.18%) DV Cleared
10 16 (16.16%) Generative AI
10 16 (16.16%) Statistics
10 16 (16.16%) Technical Leadership
11 15 (15.15%) Mentoring
11 15 (15.15%) PhD
12 14 (14.14%) Visualisation
13 13 (13.13%) Line Management
14 12 (12.12%) LLM
15 11 (11.11%) Natural Language Processing
15 11 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
16 9 (9.09%) Azure
16 9 (9.09%) CI/CD
16 9 (9.09%) Data Analysis
16 9 (9.09%) Data Engineering
16 9 (9.09%) Data Strategy
16 9 (9.09%) Data Visualisation
16 9 (9.09%) Statistical Analysis
17 8 (8.08%) Computer Science
17 8 (8.08%) Git
17 8 (8.08%) Power BI

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 2 (2.02%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 9 (9.09%) Azure
2 8 (8.08%) Power Platform
3 6 (6.06%) AWS
4 5 (5.05%) dbt
5 4 (4.04%) Dataform
5 4 (4.04%) Snowflake
6 2 (2.02%) Amazon S3
6 2 (2.02%) GCP
7 1 (1.01%) Amazon SageMaker
7 1 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.01%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 5 (5.05%) Broadband
2 1 (1.01%) LTE
2 1 (1.01%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (1.01%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.08%) Power BI
2 6 (6.06%) Tableau
3 4 (4.04%) Big Data
3 4 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (4.04%) Looker
3 4 (4.04%) Metabase
4 1 (1.01%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (1.01%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (1.01%) Data Mining
4 1 (1.01%) Hadoop
4 1 (1.01%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.01%) NoSQL
4 1 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.01%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 8 (8.08%) Git
2 4 (4.04%) MLflow
General
1 19 (19.19%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (13.13%) Social Skills
3 12 (12.12%) Finance
4 9 (9.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 7 (7.07%) Retail
6 6 (6.06%) Marketing
7 4 (4.04%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (4.04%) Public Sector
8 2 (2.02%) Aerospace
8 2 (2.02%) Banking
8 2 (2.02%) Financial Institution
8 2 (2.02%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.01%) Advertising
9 1 (1.01%) Digital Economy
9 1 (1.01%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (8.08%) TensorFlow
2 7 (7.07%) PyTorch
2 7 (7.07%) scikit-learn
3 5 (5.05%) EDI
4 4 (4.04%) XGBoost
5 2 (2.02%) NetworkX
5 2 (2.02%) NumPy
5 2 (2.02%) Pandas
5 2 (2.02%) PySpark
5 2 (2.02%) Streamlit
6 1 (1.01%) Django
6 1 (1.01%) FastAPI
6 1 (1.01%) Flask
6 1 (1.01%) Hugging Face
6 1 (1.01%) Kafka
6 1 (1.01%) LangChain
6 1 (1.01%) PostGIS
6 1 (1.01%) SciPy
6 1 (1.01%) SpaCy
6 1 (1.01%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.06%) Algorithms
2 5 (5.05%) Product Ownership
3 1 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
3 1 (1.01%) Clustering
3 1 (1.01%) Data Structures
3 1 (1.01%) e-Learning
3 1 (1.01%) FPGA
3 1 (1.01%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (100.00%) Data Science
2 47 (47.47%) Machine Learning
3 46 (46.46%) AI
4 23 (23.23%) Analytics
5 20 (20.20%) Mathematics
6 16 (16.16%) Generative AI
6 16 (16.16%) Statistics
6 16 (16.16%) Technical Leadership
7 15 (15.15%) Mentoring
8 14 (14.14%) Visualisation
9 13 (13.13%) Line Management
10 12 (12.12%) LLM
11 11 (11.11%) Natural Language Processing
11 11 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (9.09%) CI/CD
12 9 (9.09%) Data Analysis
12 9 (9.09%) Data Engineering
12 9 (9.09%) Data Strategy
12 9 (9.09%) Data Visualisation
12 9 (9.09%) Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages
1 44 (44.44%) Python
2 21 (21.21%) SQL
3 8 (8.08%) R
4 4 (4.04%) Julia
5 1 (1.01%) C++
5 1 (1.01%) Scala
Qualifications
1 20 (20.20%) Degree
2 19 (19.19%) Security Cleared
3 18 (18.18%) DV Cleared
4 15 (15.15%) PhD
5 6 (6.06%) SC Cleared
6 4 (4.04%) DBS Check
7 3 (3.03%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (6.06%) Data Quality
2 1 (1.01%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (1.01%) QA
System Software
1 2 (2.02%) Docker
Systems Management
1 1 (1.01%) Argo
1 1 (1.01%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 6 (6.06%) Microsoft
2 2 (2.02%) Databricks
3 1 (1.01%) Mapbox