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 15 October 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 474 616 587
Rank change year-on-year +142 -29 +77
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 361 41 168
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.083% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.093% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 192 14 58
10th Percentile £65,000 £75,750 £54,188
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% -13.85%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £85,000
90th Percentile - £96,750 £105,375
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £62,879
% change year-on-year +5.88% +35.18% -22.61%

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 109,883 44,162 67,664
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.51% 89.77% 95.35%
Number of salaries quoted 74,751 25,776 38,845
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £35,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £53,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.35% -2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +19.57% -8.00% -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 15 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 15 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 +138 337 £90,000 +5.88% 28
London +76 184 £95,000 +11.76% 16
UK excluding London -3 167 £90,000 +5.88% 23
Work from Home +33 90 £75,026 -11.73% 27
North of England -16 55 £90,000 +9.09% 5
South East -9 45 £90,000 - 9
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 2
East Midlands - 34 £75,000 - 2
North West -2 28 £90,000 +9.09% 2
Yorkshire - 24 £90,000 - 3
South West -63 13 £75,000 -11.76% 6
Wales - 8 £100,000 -
Northern Ireland - 7 £90,000 -
North East - 3 £100,000 -
Scotland - 2 £75,013 -
West Midlands - 2 £75,013 -
East of England - 1 £65,000 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 15 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
2 184 (50.97%) Machine Learning
3 138 (38.23%) AI
4 123 (34.07%) Python
5 101 (27.98%) Analytics
6 65 (18.01%) Mentoring
7 59 (16.34%) SQL
8 56 (15.51%) MLOps
9 55 (15.24%) Degree
10 48 (13.30%) CI/CD
11 46 (12.74%) Actionable Insight
12 45 (12.47%) Roadmaps
12 45 (12.47%) Software Engineering
13 42 (11.63%) Azure
14 40 (11.08%) Decision-Making
14 40 (11.08%) Natural Language Processing
15 36 (9.97%) AWS
15 36 (9.97%) Master's Degree
16 35 (9.70%) Data Engineering
16 35 (9.70%) Predictive Modelling
17 34 (9.42%) Generative AI
18 33 (9.14%) Apache Spark
18 33 (9.14%) PhD
18 33 (9.14%) Statistics
19 32 (8.86%) Collaborative Culture
20 31 (8.59%) GCP
20 31 (8.59%) LLM
21 30 (8.31%) PyTorch
22 29 (8.03%) TensorFlow
23 28 (7.76%) Amazon Redshift

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 (9.14%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.83%) Apache
2 3 (0.83%) SAS
3 2 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 2 (0.55%) Chatbot
1 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 2 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
1 2 (0.55%) SPSS
Cloud Services
1 42 (11.63%) Azure
2 36 (9.97%) AWS
3 31 (8.59%) GCP
4 15 (4.16%) SaaS
5 12 (3.32%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.11%) Azure Databricks
7 3 (0.83%) Amazon S3
7 3 (0.83%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (0.83%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 3 (0.83%) Serverless
7 3 (0.83%) Snowflake
8 2 (0.55%) Amazon SageMaker
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%) GitHub
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
Development Applications
1 22 (6.09%) Git
2 3 (0.83%) MLflow
General
1 95 (26.32%) Finance
2 43 (11.91%) Banking
3 30 (8.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 28 (7.76%) Social Skills
5 26 (7.20%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (7.20%) Financial Institution
6 21 (5.82%) Retail
7 17 (4.71%) Public Sector
8 10 (2.77%) Marketing
9 9 (2.49%) Law
10 8 (2.22%) Games
11 7 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.66%) Wearables
13 5 (1.39%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.83%) Automotive
14 3 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.83%) Publishing
15 2 (0.55%) Legal
16 1 (0.28%) Tech for Good
16 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.31%) PyTorch
2 29 (8.03%) TensorFlow
3 25 (6.93%) Hugging Face
3 25 (6.93%) SpaCy
4 11 (3.05%) scikit-learn
5 8 (2.22%) LangChain
5 8 (2.22%) Pandas
5 8 (2.22%) XGBoost
6 6 (1.66%) NumPy
7 5 (1.39%) PySpark
8 4 (1.11%) LangGraph
8 4 (1.11%) LlamaIndex
9 3 (0.83%) Kafka
10 2 (0.55%) Apache Beam
10 2 (0.55%) Terraform
11 1 (0.28%) Kaldi
11 1 (0.28%) Keras
11 1 (0.28%) LightGBM
11 1 (0.28%) Qwen
11 1 (0.28%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.93%) e-Learning
2 15 (4.16%) Algorithms
3 10 (2.77%) AI Agents
4 7 (1.94%) Cloud Native
4 7 (1.94%) Credit Risk
5 4 (1.11%) Blog
6 3 (0.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 3 (0.83%) Life Science
7 2 (0.55%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.28%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.28%) Clustering
8 1 (0.28%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.28%) FMCG
8 1 (0.28%) Product Ownership
Processes & Methodologies
1 361 (100.00%) Data Science
2 184 (50.97%) Machine Learning
3 138 (38.23%) AI
4 101 (27.98%) Analytics
5 65 (18.01%) Mentoring
6 56 (15.51%) MLOps
7 48 (13.30%) CI/CD
8 46 (12.74%) Actionable Insight
9 45 (12.47%) Roadmaps
9 45 (12.47%) Software Engineering
10 40 (11.08%) Decision-Making
10 40 (11.08%) Natural Language Processing
11 35 (9.70%) Data Engineering
11 35 (9.70%) Predictive Modelling
12 34 (9.42%) Generative AI
13 33 (9.14%) Statistics
14 32 (8.86%) Collaborative Culture
15 31 (8.59%) LLM
16 28 (7.76%) DevOps
17 26 (7.20%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 123 (34.07%) Python
2 59 (16.34%) SQL
3 4 (1.11%) 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 33 (9.14%) PhD
4 14 (3.88%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.39%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.11%) Numerate Degree
6 4 (1.11%) SC Cleared
7 2 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.88%) Data Quality
2 6 (1.66%) Actionable Recommendations
3 5 (1.39%) EU AI Act
3 5 (1.39%) GDPR
4 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 2 (0.55%) QA
System Software
1 9 (2.49%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (2.22%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (4.99%) Databricks
2 10 (2.77%) LexisNexis
3 8 (2.22%) Workday
4 7 (1.94%) Google
4 7 (1.94%) Microsoft
5 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.83%) Oracle
5 3 (0.83%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (0.83%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.55%) New Relic
6 2 (0.55%) Splunk
7 1 (0.28%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.28%) Mistral