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 8 October 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 477 612 616
Rank change year-on-year +135 +4 +46
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 357 42 174
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.085% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.094% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 195 15 61
10th Percentile £65,000 £76,000 £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 £92,500 £85,000
90th Percentile - £96,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £85,000 £62,879
% change year-on-year +5.88% +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 109,143 44,565 69,871
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.71% 89.75% 95.35%
Number of salaries quoted 74,344 25,695 40,313
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £31,000
25th Percentile £40,825 £35,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,500 £54,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.34% -0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £76,250 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,750 £50,000
% change year-on-year +17.65% -6.50% -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 8 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 8 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 +150 334 £90,000 +5.88% 382
London +82 182 £95,000 +11.76% 255
UK excluding London +46 165 £90,000 +5.88% 131
Work from Home +44 93 £75,026 -11.73% 169
North of England -11 57 £90,000 +9.09% 33
South East -7 43 £90,000 - 34
Midlands - 36 £75,000 - 21
East Midlands - 33 £75,000 - 8
North West +6 30 £90,000 +9.09% 17
Yorkshire - 24 £90,000 - 15
South West -61 12 £75,000 -11.76% 17
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 8
Northern Ireland - 6 £90,000 - 2
North East - 3 £100,000 - 1
West Midlands - 3 £75,000 - 13
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 5
East of England - 1 £65,000 - 11

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

For the 6 months to 8 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.

1 357 (100.00%) Data Science
2 183 (51.26%) Machine Learning
3 138 (38.66%) AI
4 122 (34.17%) Python
5 100 (28.01%) Analytics
6 66 (18.49%) Mentoring
7 58 (16.25%) MLOps
8 57 (15.97%) SQL
9 53 (14.85%) Degree
10 49 (13.73%) CI/CD
11 44 (12.32%) Roadmaps
12 43 (12.04%) Azure
12 43 (12.04%) Software Engineering
13 41 (11.48%) Actionable Insight
14 40 (11.20%) Natural Language Processing
15 37 (10.36%) AWS
15 37 (10.36%) Decision-Making
15 37 (10.36%) Master's Degree
16 36 (10.08%) Data Engineering
17 34 (9.52%) Apache Spark
17 34 (9.52%) Generative AI
18 33 (9.24%) GCP
18 33 (9.24%) Predictive Modelling
18 33 (9.24%) Statistics
19 32 (8.96%) Collaborative Culture
19 32 (8.96%) LLM
19 32 (8.96%) PhD
20 30 (8.40%) PyTorch
21 29 (8.12%) Amazon Redshift
21 29 (8.12%) TensorFlow

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 34 (9.52%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.84%) Apache
2 3 (0.84%) SAS
3 2 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 3 (0.84%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.56%) SPSS
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Cloud Services
1 43 (12.04%) Azure
2 37 (10.36%) AWS
3 33 (9.24%) GCP
4 15 (4.20%) SaaS
5 12 (3.36%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.12%) Azure Databricks
7 3 (0.84%) Amazon S3
7 3 (0.84%) AWS Lambda
7 3 (0.84%) Salesforce Service Cloud
7 3 (0.84%) Serverless
7 3 (0.84%) Snowflake
8 2 (0.56%) Amazon SageMaker
8 2 (0.56%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (0.56%) Azure AI
8 2 (0.56%) Cloud Composer
8 2 (0.56%) dbt
8 2 (0.56%) Google Gemini
8 2 (0.56%) 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 29 (8.12%) Amazon Redshift
2 10 (2.80%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.40%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.40%) Flink
4 3 (0.84%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (0.84%) BigQuery
4 3 (0.84%) Delta Lake
4 3 (0.84%) Redis
5 2 (0.56%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.56%) Looker
5 2 (0.56%) Power BI
5 2 (0.56%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 20 (5.60%) Git
2 3 (0.84%) MLflow
General
1 94 (26.33%) Finance
2 44 (12.32%) Banking
3 28 (7.84%) Social Skills
4 27 (7.56%) Financial Institution
4 27 (7.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 24 (6.72%) Analytical Skills
6 18 (5.04%) Retail
7 16 (4.48%) Public Sector
8 10 (2.80%) Marketing
9 9 (2.52%) Law
10 8 (2.24%) Games
11 7 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.68%) Wearables
13 5 (1.40%) Automotive
13 5 (1.40%) Retail Banking
14 3 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.84%) Publishing
15 1 (0.28%) Legal
15 1 (0.28%) Tech for Good
15 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.40%) PyTorch
2 29 (8.12%) TensorFlow
3 26 (7.28%) SpaCy
4 25 (7.00%) Hugging Face
5 11 (3.08%) scikit-learn
6 9 (2.52%) LangChain
6 9 (2.52%) XGBoost
7 8 (2.24%) Pandas
8 6 (1.68%) NumPy
9 5 (1.40%) LlamaIndex
9 5 (1.40%) PySpark
10 4 (1.12%) LangGraph
11 3 (0.84%) Kafka
12 2 (0.56%) Apache Beam
12 2 (0.56%) Terraform
13 1 (0.28%) Kaldi
13 1 (0.28%) Keras
13 1 (0.28%) LightGBM
13 1 (0.28%) Qwen
13 1 (0.28%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.28%) e-Learning
2 15 (4.20%) Algorithms
3 10 (2.80%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.24%) Cloud Native
5 7 (1.96%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 3 (0.84%) Life Science
7 2 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.56%) Blog
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
1 357 (100.00%) Data Science
2 183 (51.26%) Machine Learning
3 138 (38.66%) AI
4 100 (28.01%) Analytics
5 66 (18.49%) Mentoring
6 58 (16.25%) MLOps
7 49 (13.73%) CI/CD
8 44 (12.32%) Roadmaps
9 43 (12.04%) Software Engineering
10 41 (11.48%) Actionable Insight
11 40 (11.20%) Natural Language Processing
12 37 (10.36%) Decision-Making
13 36 (10.08%) Data Engineering
14 34 (9.52%) Generative AI
15 33 (9.24%) Predictive Modelling
15 33 (9.24%) Statistics
16 32 (8.96%) Collaborative Culture
16 32 (8.96%) LLM
17 28 (7.84%) DevOps
18 27 (7.56%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Programming Languages
1 122 (34.17%) Python
2 57 (15.97%) SQL
3 4 (1.12%) R
4 2 (0.56%) Java
4 2 (0.56%) Scala
4 2 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 53 (14.85%) Degree
2 37 (10.36%) Master's Degree
3 32 (8.96%) PhD
4 15 (4.20%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.40%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.12%) SC Cleared
7 3 (0.84%) Numerate Degree
8 2 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.92%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.40%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (1.40%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.40%) GDPR
3 2 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 1 (0.28%) QA
System Software
1 10 (2.80%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (2.52%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (5.04%) Databricks
2 10 (2.80%) LexisNexis
3 8 (2.24%) Google
4 7 (1.96%) Workday
5 6 (1.68%) Microsoft
6 3 (0.84%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.84%) Oracle
6 3 (0.84%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.84%) Salesforce
7 2 (0.56%) New Relic
7 2 (0.56%) Splunk
8 1 (0.28%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.28%) Mistral