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 7 March 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 596 553 676
Rank change year-on-year -43 +123 +148
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 87 114 153
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.25% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.13% 0.27% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 59 37 102
10th Percentile £56,243 £50,850 £53,750
25th Percentile £59,808 £62,000 £68,718
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,939 £71,991 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.43% -10.01% +14.29%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £96,539
90th Percentile - £101,750 £112,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £70,000 £75,000
% change year-on-year -12.26% -6.67% +15.38%

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 66,296 42,207 76,699
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 91.62% 91.15% 94.65%
Number of salaries quoted 41,997 23,429 59,277
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £28,500
25th Percentile £38,750 £45,000 £38,890
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 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -5.04%

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 7 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 7 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 -10 85 £80,939 +10.13% 64
London +36 53 £90,000 +12.50% 42
UK excluding London -30 34 £61,418 -12.26% 35
Work from Home -1 22 £85,000 +18.07% 30
North of England -21 9 £61,418 -4.03% 3
South West -29 9 £58,497 -18.74% 6
South East +11 7 £40,000 -54.29% 14
North West - 6 £61,418 - 3
East of England +16 4 £100,000 - 3
Midlands -3 3 £70,000 +21.74% 6
West Midlands +5 2 £75,860 +31.93% 1
Yorkshire -45 2 £66,720 +4.25%
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 2
North East -15 1 £66,720 -
East Midlands - 1 £70,000 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 7 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 87 (100.00%) Data Science
2 42 (48.28%) Machine Learning
3 41 (47.13%) AI
3 41 (47.13%) Python
4 22 (25.29%) Degree
5 20 (22.99%) Analytics
6 19 (21.84%) Security Cleared
7 18 (20.69%) DV Cleared
7 18 (20.69%) Mathematics
8 17 (19.54%) PhD
9 16 (18.39%) Technical Leadership
10 15 (17.24%) Natural Language Processing
11 14 (16.09%) Azure
11 14 (16.09%) Generative AI
11 14 (16.09%) SQL
11 14 (16.09%) Statistics
12 13 (14.94%) Line Management
12 13 (14.94%) Mentoring
13 11 (12.64%) LLM
13 11 (12.64%) MLOps
14 10 (11.49%) AWS
14 10 (11.49%) Data Analysis
14 10 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
15 9 (10.34%) CI/CD
15 9 (10.34%) Computer Science
15 9 (10.34%) TensorFlow
15 9 (10.34%) Visualisation
16 8 (9.20%) Data Engineering
16 8 (9.20%) Data Visualisation
16 8 (9.20%) Git

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 5 (5.75%) Apache Spark
2 1 (1.15%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 14 (16.09%) Azure
2 10 (11.49%) AWS
3 6 (6.90%) GCP
4 4 (4.60%) Snowflake
5 3 (3.45%) Power Platform
6 1 (1.15%) Amazon S3
6 1 (1.15%) Azure Machine Learning
6 1 (1.15%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.60%) Broadband
2 1 (1.15%) LTE
2 1 (1.15%) Software-Defined Radio
2 1 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
2 1 (1.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (4.60%) Amazon Redshift
1 4 (4.60%) Big Data
2 3 (3.45%) Power BI
3 1 (1.15%) Hadoop
3 1 (1.15%) MongoDB
3 1 (1.15%) NoSQL
3 1 (1.15%) Pinecone
3 1 (1.15%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.15%) QGIS
3 1 (1.15%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (9.20%) Git
2 4 (4.60%) MLflow
General
1 12 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
1 12 (13.79%) Finance
1 12 (13.79%) Social Skills
2 9 (10.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 5 (5.75%) Financial Institution
3 5 (5.75%) Public Sector
3 5 (5.75%) Retail
4 4 (4.60%) Banking
4 4 (4.60%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (3.45%) Marketing
6 1 (1.15%) Advertising
6 1 (1.15%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.15%) Digital Economy
6 1 (1.15%) Games
6 1 (1.15%) Legal
6 1 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (10.34%) TensorFlow
2 6 (6.90%) PyTorch
3 5 (5.75%) EDI
4 4 (4.60%) scikit-learn
4 4 (4.60%) SpaCy
5 2 (2.30%) Hugging Face
5 2 (2.30%) LangChain
5 2 (2.30%) NetworkX
5 2 (2.30%) PySpark
5 2 (2.30%) Streamlit
5 2 (2.30%) XGBoost
6 1 (1.15%) Django
6 1 (1.15%) Faiss
6 1 (1.15%) FastAPI
6 1 (1.15%) GeoPandas
6 1 (1.15%) Kafka
6 1 (1.15%) MapLibre
6 1 (1.15%) NumPy
6 1 (1.15%) PostGIS
6 1 (1.15%) SciPy
Miscellaneous
1 6 (6.90%) Algorithms
2 5 (5.75%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.60%) e-Learning
4 2 (2.30%) AI Agents
5 1 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.15%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.15%) Clustering
5 1 (1.15%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.15%) FPGA
5 1 (1.15%) Social Network
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (100.00%) Data Science
2 42 (48.28%) Machine Learning
3 41 (47.13%) AI
4 20 (22.99%) Analytics
5 18 (20.69%) Mathematics
6 16 (18.39%) Technical Leadership
7 15 (17.24%) Natural Language Processing
8 14 (16.09%) Generative AI
8 14 (16.09%) Statistics
9 13 (14.94%) Line Management
9 13 (14.94%) Mentoring
10 11 (12.64%) LLM
10 11 (12.64%) MLOps
11 10 (11.49%) Data Analysis
11 10 (11.49%) Problem-Solving
12 9 (10.34%) CI/CD
12 9 (10.34%) Computer Science
12 9 (10.34%) Visualisation
13 8 (9.20%) Data Engineering
13 8 (9.20%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 41 (47.13%) Python
2 14 (16.09%) SQL
3 4 (4.60%) R
4 1 (1.15%) C++
4 1 (1.15%) Scala
Qualifications
1 22 (25.29%) Degree
2 19 (21.84%) Security Cleared
3 18 (20.69%) DV Cleared
4 17 (19.54%) PhD
5 6 (6.90%) SC Cleared
6 5 (5.75%) Master's Degree
7 1 (1.15%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (1.15%) Actionable Recommendations
1 1 (1.15%) Data Quality
System Software
1 4 (4.60%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (2.30%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.15%) Argo
Vendors
1 6 (6.90%) Microsoft
2 2 (2.30%) Databricks
3 1 (1.15%) Mapbox