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 10 May 2026.

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

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 536 530 685
Rank change year-on-year -6 +155 +117
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 177 116 200
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.19% 0.27% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.21% 0.30% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 126 46 118
10th Percentile £59,617 £53,750 £50,000
25th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £66,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% - +16.79%
75th Percentile £95,000 £90,000 £96,154
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £70,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year +7.14% -9.68% +19.23%

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 84,643 39,171 91,241
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.16% 89.53% 94.56%
Number of salaries quoted 55,266 23,359 67,069
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £28,500
25th Percentile £40,000 £41,250 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £58,000 £52,550
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +10.37% -12.42%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £90,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -5.66%

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 10 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 10 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 +47 174 £80,939 +1.17% 68
London +42 92 £90,000 +5.88% 43
UK excluding London -22 85 £75,000 +7.14% 35
Work from Home +9 57 £70,000 -9.68% 32
North of England -20 35 £75,000 +17.19% 13
North West - 29 £75,000 - 8
Midlands -2 18 £75,000 +30.43% 7
East Midlands - 13 £73,750 - 5
South West -71 11 £58,497 -18.74% 1
East of England - 10 £86,725 -
South East -21 8 £40,000 -54.29% 13
West Midlands -26 5 £75,000 +30.43% 2
Yorkshire -61 4 £66,720 +4.25% 1
Northern Ireland - 3 - -
North East - 2 £66,720 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 10 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.

1 177 (100.00%) Data Science
2 81 (45.76%) Machine Learning
3 70 (39.55%) AI
4 67 (37.85%) Python
5 35 (19.77%) Mentoring
6 31 (17.51%) Analytics
6 31 (17.51%) SQL
7 26 (14.69%) Degree
7 26 (14.69%) Statistics
8 25 (14.12%) LLM
9 24 (13.56%) Mathematics
9 24 (13.56%) Security Cleared
10 19 (10.73%) MLOps
10 19 (10.73%) PhD
11 18 (10.17%) DV Cleared
12 17 (9.60%) Generative AI
12 17 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
12 17 (9.60%) Visualisation
13 16 (9.04%) PyTorch
14 15 (8.47%) Azure
14 15 (8.47%) CI/CD
14 15 (8.47%) Data Engineering
14 15 (8.47%) Line Management
14 15 (8.47%) TensorFlow
15 14 (7.91%) Natural Language Processing
16 13 (7.34%) AWS
16 13 (7.34%) R
17 12 (6.78%) Data Quality
17 12 (6.78%) Problem-Solving
17 12 (6.78%) Software Engineering

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 7 (3.95%) Apache Spark
2 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (0.56%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (2.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.56%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 15 (8.47%) Azure
2 13 (7.34%) AWS
3 10 (5.65%) GCP
3 10 (5.65%) Power Platform
4 7 (3.95%) dbt
5 6 (3.39%) Dataform
6 5 (2.82%) SaaS
7 4 (2.26%) Snowflake
8 3 (1.69%) Amazon S3
8 3 (1.69%) Amazon SageMaker
8 3 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (1.69%) Serverless
9 1 (0.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.56%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.26%) Broadband
2 1 (0.56%) 5G
2 1 (0.56%) LTE
2 1 (0.56%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (0.56%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.65%) Power BI
2 9 (5.08%) Tableau
3 6 (3.39%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (3.39%) Looker
3 6 (3.39%) Metabase
4 5 (2.82%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.69%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.69%) Big Data
6 2 (1.13%) Data Mining
7 1 (0.56%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.56%) QGIS
Development Applications
1 8 (4.52%) Git
2 3 (1.69%) MLflow
3 1 (0.56%) JIRA
General
1 36 (20.34%) Finance
2 22 (12.43%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (7.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 14 (7.91%) Social Skills
4 9 (5.08%) Banking
5 8 (4.52%) Marketing
6 7 (3.95%) Public Sector
6 7 (3.95%) Retail
7 6 (3.39%) Financial Institution
8 4 (2.26%) Automotive
8 4 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.13%) Aerospace
9 2 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.13%) Wearables
10 1 (0.56%) Advertising
10 1 (0.56%) Digital Economy
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (9.04%) PyTorch
2 15 (8.47%) TensorFlow
3 10 (5.65%) scikit-learn
4 9 (5.08%) Hugging Face
5 5 (2.82%) EDI
5 5 (2.82%) NumPy
5 5 (2.82%) Pandas
5 5 (2.82%) PySpark
5 5 (2.82%) SpaCy
5 5 (2.82%) XGBoost
6 4 (2.26%) LangChain
7 3 (1.69%) LlamaIndex
8 2 (1.13%) NetworkX
8 2 (1.13%) Streamlit
9 1 (0.56%) GeoPandas
9 1 (0.56%) Kafka
9 1 (0.56%) MapLibre
9 1 (0.56%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.56%) SciPy
9 1 (0.56%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 6 (3.39%) Algorithms
1 6 (3.39%) Product Ownership
2 5 (2.82%) e-Learning
3 4 (2.26%) Cloud Native
4 1 (0.56%) AI Agents
4 1 (0.56%) Clustering
4 1 (0.56%) Data Structures
4 1 (0.56%) FPGA
4 1 (0.56%) Life Science
4 1 (0.56%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (100.00%) Data Science
2 81 (45.76%) Machine Learning
3 70 (39.55%) AI
4 35 (19.77%) Mentoring
5 31 (17.51%) Analytics
6 26 (14.69%) Statistics
7 25 (14.12%) LLM
8 24 (13.56%) Mathematics
9 19 (10.73%) MLOps
10 17 (9.60%) Generative AI
10 17 (9.60%) Technical Leadership
10 17 (9.60%) Visualisation
11 15 (8.47%) CI/CD
11 15 (8.47%) Data Engineering
11 15 (8.47%) Line Management
12 14 (7.91%) Natural Language Processing
13 12 (6.78%) Problem-Solving
13 12 (6.78%) Software Engineering
14 11 (6.21%) Actionable Insight
14 11 (6.21%) Data Strategy
Programming Languages
1 67 (37.85%) Python
2 31 (17.51%) SQL
3 13 (7.34%) R
4 6 (3.39%) Julia
5 1 (0.56%) C++
5 1 (0.56%) Scala
Qualifications
1 26 (14.69%) Degree
2 24 (13.56%) Security Cleared
3 19 (10.73%) PhD
4 18 (10.17%) DV Cleared
5 7 (3.95%) Master's Degree
5 7 (3.95%) SC Cleared
6 6 (3.39%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.78%) Data Quality
2 2 (1.13%) QA
3 1 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 8 (4.52%) Docker
Systems Management
1 8 (4.52%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.56%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (3.39%) Microsoft
2 4 (2.26%) Google
3 2 (1.13%) Databricks
4 1 (0.56%) Cognizant
4 1 (0.56%) Mapbox