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 29 September 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 483 616 586
Rank change year-on-year +133 -30 +83
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 348 44 182
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.090% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.100% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 203 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 109,377 44,042 71,502
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.96% 89.72% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,715 25,470 41,572
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,750
25th Percentile £41,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -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 29 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 29 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 +126 326 £90,000 +5.88% 308
London +75 171 £95,000 +8.57% 197
UK excluding London +27 167 £83,774 -1.44% 115
Work from Home +52 101 £75,026 -11.73% 146
North of England -10 64 £90,000 +9.09% 24
South East -11 39 £90,000 - 28
Midlands - 37 £75,000 - 20
North West +8 35 £90,000 +9.09% 14
East Midlands - 32 £75,000 - 11
Yorkshire - 25 £90,000 - 9
South West -73 11 £75,000 -11.76% 20
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 - 11

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 348 (100.00%) Data Science
2 179 (51.44%) Machine Learning
3 136 (39.08%) AI
4 122 (35.06%) Python
5 97 (27.87%) Analytics
6 68 (19.54%) Mentoring
7 58 (16.67%) SQL
8 55 (15.80%) MLOps
9 51 (14.66%) Degree
10 48 (13.79%) CI/CD
11 43 (12.36%) Roadmaps
12 42 (12.07%) Azure
13 40 (11.49%) Software Engineering
14 38 (10.92%) Natural Language Processing
15 37 (10.63%) Actionable Insight
15 37 (10.63%) AWS
16 36 (10.34%) Decision-Making
17 35 (10.06%) Master's Degree
18 34 (9.77%) Data Engineering
18 34 (9.77%) LLM
18 34 (9.77%) Statistics
19 33 (9.48%) Apache Spark
19 33 (9.48%) Generative AI
20 32 (9.20%) GCP
21 31 (8.91%) Predictive Modelling
21 31 (8.91%) PyTorch
22 30 (8.62%) TensorFlow
23 29 (8.33%) Collaborative Culture
23 29 (8.33%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
24 28 (8.05%) 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 (9.48%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.86%) Apache
2 3 (0.86%) SAS
3 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (1.15%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.57%) SPSS
3 1 (0.29%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 42 (12.07%) Azure
2 37 (10.63%) AWS
3 32 (9.20%) GCP
4 14 (4.02%) SaaS
5 12 (3.45%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.15%) Amazon S3
6 4 (1.15%) AWS Lambda
6 4 (1.15%) Azure Databricks
6 4 (1.15%) Serverless
7 3 (0.86%) Amazon SageMaker
7 3 (0.86%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 3 (0.86%) Snowflake
8 2 (0.57%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (0.57%) Azure AI
8 2 (0.57%) Cloud Composer
8 2 (0.57%) dbt
8 2 (0.57%) Google Gemini
8 2 (0.57%) 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 (7.76%) Amazon Redshift
2 10 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.44%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.44%) Flink
4 3 (0.86%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (0.86%) BigQuery
4 3 (0.86%) Delta Lake
4 3 (0.86%) Redis
5 2 (0.57%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.57%) Looker
5 2 (0.57%) Power BI
5 2 (0.57%) Tableau
6 1 (0.29%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.29%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 20 (5.75%) Git
2 3 (0.86%) MLflow
3 1 (0.29%) JIRA
General
1 95 (27.30%) Finance
2 42 (12.07%) Banking
3 28 (8.05%) Social Skills
4 25 (7.18%) Financial Institution
5 24 (6.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 22 (6.32%) Analytical Skills
7 18 (5.17%) Public Sector
8 14 (4.02%) Retail
9 9 (2.59%) Law
9 9 (2.59%) Marketing
10 8 (2.30%) Games
11 7 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.72%) Wearables
13 5 (1.44%) Automotive
13 5 (1.44%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.86%) Publishing
15 1 (0.29%) Legal
15 1 (0.29%) Tech for Good
15 1 (0.29%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (8.91%) PyTorch
2 30 (8.62%) TensorFlow
3 25 (7.18%) Hugging Face
4 24 (6.90%) SpaCy
5 13 (3.74%) scikit-learn
6 10 (2.87%) Pandas
7 9 (2.59%) LangChain
7 9 (2.59%) XGBoost
8 8 (2.30%) NumPy
8 8 (2.30%) PySpark
9 5 (1.44%) LlamaIndex
10 4 (1.15%) LangGraph
11 3 (0.86%) Kafka
12 2 (0.57%) Apache Beam
12 2 (0.57%) Terraform
13 1 (0.29%) Kaldi
13 1 (0.29%) Keras
13 1 (0.29%) LightGBM
13 1 (0.29%) Qwen
13 1 (0.29%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 24 (6.90%) e-Learning
2 15 (4.31%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.16%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.30%) Cloud Native
5 7 (2.01%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.15%) Life Science
7 3 (0.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.57%) 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
1 348 (100.00%) Data Science
2 179 (51.44%) Machine Learning
3 136 (39.08%) AI
4 97 (27.87%) Analytics
5 68 (19.54%) Mentoring
6 55 (15.80%) MLOps
7 48 (13.79%) CI/CD
8 43 (12.36%) Roadmaps
9 40 (11.49%) Software Engineering
10 38 (10.92%) Natural Language Processing
11 37 (10.63%) Actionable Insight
12 36 (10.34%) Decision-Making
13 34 (9.77%) Data Engineering
13 34 (9.77%) LLM
13 34 (9.77%) Statistics
14 33 (9.48%) Generative AI
15 31 (8.91%) Predictive Modelling
16 29 (8.33%) Collaborative Culture
16 29 (8.33%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 26 (7.47%) Deep Learning
Programming Languages
1 122 (35.06%) Python
2 58 (16.67%) SQL
3 7 (2.01%) R
4 2 (0.57%) Java
4 2 (0.57%) Scala
4 2 (0.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 51 (14.66%) Degree
2 35 (10.06%) Master's Degree
3 28 (8.05%) PhD
4 16 (4.60%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.44%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.15%) SC Cleared
7 2 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
8 1 (0.29%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (4.89%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.44%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.44%) GDPR
3 4 (1.15%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 12 (3.45%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (3.16%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (5.17%) Databricks
2 9 (2.59%) Google
2 9 (2.59%) LexisNexis
3 6 (1.72%) Workday
4 5 (1.44%) Microsoft
5 3 (0.86%) OpenAI
5 3 (0.86%) Oracle
5 3 (0.86%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (0.86%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.57%) New Relic
6 2 (0.57%) Splunk
7 1 (0.29%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.29%) Dataiku
7 1 (0.29%) Mistral