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 6 October 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 487 624 596
Rank change year-on-year +137 -28 +60
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 363 42 175
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.31% 0.085% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.33% 0.094% 0.25%
Number of salaries quoted 202 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 109,799 44,474 69,871
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.81% 89.76% 95.31%
Number of salaries quoted 74,691 25,606 40,305
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,000 £31,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £35,718 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,589 £54,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.50% -0.91% -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,000 £73,750 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £46,566 £50,000
% change year-on-year +18.11% -6.87% -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 6 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 6 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 +151 340 £90,000 +5.88% 380
London +82 183 £95,000 +8.57% 246
UK excluding London +21 170 £83,774 -1.44% 138
Work from Home +53 98 £75,026 -11.73% 171
North of England -6 61 £90,000 +9.09% 34
South East 0 43 £90,000 - 34
Midlands - 37 £75,000 - 23
North West +2 34 £90,000 +9.09% 16
East Midlands - 33 £75,000 - 9
Yorkshire - 24 £90,000 - 16
South West -66 12 £75,000 -11.76% 20
Wales - 8 £100,000 - 11
Northern Ireland - 6 £90,000 - 3
West Midlands - 4 £75,000 - 14
North East - 3 £100,000 - 2
Scotland - 2 £75,013 - 2
East of England - 1 £65,000 - 11

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

For the 6 months to 6 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.

1 363 (100.00%) Data Science
2 185 (50.96%) Machine Learning
3 140 (38.57%) AI
4 121 (33.33%) Python
5 100 (27.55%) Analytics
6 65 (17.91%) Mentoring
7 58 (15.98%) MLOps
8 56 (15.43%) SQL
9 52 (14.33%) Degree
10 49 (13.50%) CI/CD
11 44 (12.12%) Roadmaps
12 43 (11.85%) Azure
12 43 (11.85%) Software Engineering
13 40 (11.02%) Natural Language Processing
14 39 (10.74%) Actionable Insight
15 37 (10.19%) AWS
15 37 (10.19%) Decision-Making
16 36 (9.92%) Master's Degree
17 35 (9.64%) Data Engineering
17 35 (9.64%) Generative AI
18 34 (9.37%) Apache Spark
19 33 (9.09%) GCP
19 33 (9.09%) LLM
19 33 (9.09%) Predictive Modelling
19 33 (9.09%) Statistics
20 31 (8.54%) Collaborative Culture
20 31 (8.54%) PhD
20 31 (8.54%) PyTorch
21 30 (8.26%) TensorFlow
22 28 (7.71%) 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 34 (9.37%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.83%) Apache
2 3 (0.83%) SAS
3 2 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 4 (1.10%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.55%) SPSS
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.28%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 43 (11.85%) Azure
2 37 (10.19%) AWS
3 33 (9.09%) GCP
4 14 (3.86%) SaaS
5 12 (3.31%) Azure Machine Learning
6 4 (1.10%) 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%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (0.28%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.28%) 5G
1 1 (0.28%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (7.71%) Amazon Redshift
2 10 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (1.38%) Data Lake
3 5 (1.38%) 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
6 1 (0.28%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 21 (5.79%) Git
2 3 (0.83%) MLflow
3 1 (0.28%) JIRA
General
1 95 (26.17%) Finance
2 43 (11.85%) Banking
3 28 (7.71%) Social Skills
4 27 (7.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 26 (7.16%) Financial Institution
6 23 (6.34%) Analytical Skills
7 17 (4.68%) Retail
8 16 (4.41%) Public Sector
9 10 (2.75%) Marketing
10 9 (2.48%) Law
11 8 (2.20%) Games
12 7 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
13 6 (1.65%) Wearables
14 5 (1.38%) Automotive
14 5 (1.38%) Retail Banking
15 3 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.83%) Publishing
16 1 (0.28%) Legal
16 1 (0.28%) Tech for Good
16 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (8.54%) PyTorch
2 30 (8.26%) TensorFlow
3 25 (6.89%) Hugging Face
3 25 (6.89%) SpaCy
4 12 (3.31%) scikit-learn
5 9 (2.48%) LangChain
5 9 (2.48%) Pandas
5 9 (2.48%) XGBoost
6 7 (1.93%) NumPy
7 5 (1.38%) LlamaIndex
7 5 (1.38%) PySpark
8 4 (1.10%) LangGraph
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 (6.89%) e-Learning
2 15 (4.13%) Algorithms
3 11 (3.03%) AI Agents
4 8 (2.20%) Cloud Native
5 7 (1.93%) Credit Risk
6 4 (1.10%) Life Science
7 3 (0.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.55%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.55%) Blog
8 2 (0.55%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.28%) Acoustics
9 1 (0.28%) Clustering
9 1 (0.28%) Educational Technology
9 1 (0.28%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 363 (100.00%) Data Science
2 185 (50.96%) Machine Learning
3 140 (38.57%) AI
4 100 (27.55%) Analytics
5 65 (17.91%) Mentoring
6 58 (15.98%) MLOps
7 49 (13.50%) CI/CD
8 44 (12.12%) Roadmaps
9 43 (11.85%) Software Engineering
10 40 (11.02%) Natural Language Processing
11 39 (10.74%) Actionable Insight
12 37 (10.19%) Decision-Making
13 35 (9.64%) Data Engineering
13 35 (9.64%) Generative AI
14 33 (9.09%) LLM
14 33 (9.09%) Predictive Modelling
14 33 (9.09%) Statistics
15 31 (8.54%) Collaborative Culture
16 28 (7.71%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 27 (7.44%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 121 (33.33%) Python
2 56 (15.43%) SQL
3 4 (1.10%) R
4 2 (0.55%) Java
4 2 (0.55%) Scala
4 2 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 52 (14.33%) Degree
2 36 (9.92%) Master's Degree
3 31 (8.54%) PhD
4 16 (4.41%) Security Cleared
5 5 (1.38%) DV Cleared
6 4 (1.10%) SC Cleared
7 3 (0.83%) Numerate Degree
8 2 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.28%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (3.86%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.38%) Actionable Recommendations
2 5 (1.38%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.38%) GDPR
3 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 1 (0.28%) QA
System Software
1 11 (3.03%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (2.75%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 18 (4.96%) Databricks
2 10 (2.75%) LexisNexis
3 9 (2.48%) Google
4 7 (1.93%) Workday
5 6 (1.65%) Microsoft
6 3 (0.83%) OpenAI
6 3 (0.83%) Oracle
6 3 (0.83%) PeopleSoft
6 3 (0.83%) Salesforce
7 2 (0.55%) New Relic
7 2 (0.55%) Splunk
8 1 (0.28%) Cognizant
8 1 (0.28%) Dataiku
8 1 (0.28%) Mistral