Senior Data Scientist Job Trends

Senior Data Scientist
UK

The median Senior Data Scientist salary in the UK is £86,725 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 14 August 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 512 589 626
Rank change year-on-year +77 +37 +76
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Data Scientist 294 89 183
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.28% 0.18% 0.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.29% 0.20% 0.23%
Number of salaries quoted 181 32 75
10th Percentile £65,000 £46,725 £49,686
25th Percentile £75,000 £70,000 £57,646
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £86,725 £85,000 £72,500
Median % change year-on-year +2.03% +17.24% +4.69%
75th Percentile £100,000 £90,000 £89,375
90th Percentile - £97,250 £113,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,026 £85,000 £65,000
% change year-on-year -11.73% +30.77% -3.09%

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 100,001 44,901 79,174
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.04% 89.94% 95.02%
Number of salaries quoted 68,291 26,543 52,845
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.82% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £72,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £48,122 £50,000
% change year-on-year +9.10% -3.76% -6.54%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 +119 276 £88,363 +3.96% 228
London +57 146 £95,000 +11.76% 155
UK excluding London +6 142 £75,026 -11.73% 90
Work from Home +21 97 £75,026 -11.73% 85
North of England +10 56 £81,887 -0.74% 26
North West +31 39 £80,000 -3.03% 12
Midlands +8 36 £75,000 - 14
East Midlands - 31 £75,000 - 3
South West -71 15 £58,497 -31.18% 4
South East -17 14 £90,000 - 33
Yorkshire -23 13 £83,774 - 14
Wales -54 8 £100,000 +17.65% 4
East of England - 7 £86,725 - 6
West Midlands -22 5 £75,000 - 11
Northern Ireland - 4 - - 3
North East - 4 £91,887 -
Scotland +3 2 £75,013 +7.16%

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

For the 6 months to 14 August 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.

1 294 (100.00%) Data Science
2 152 (51.70%) Machine Learning
3 122 (41.50%) AI
4 117 (39.80%) Python
5 86 (29.25%) Analytics
6 68 (23.13%) Mentoring
7 61 (20.75%) SQL
8 46 (15.65%) Degree
9 45 (15.31%) CI/CD
10 44 (14.97%) MLOps
11 40 (13.61%) Roadmaps
12 39 (13.27%) LLM
13 37 (12.59%) Software Engineering
14 36 (12.24%) Data Engineering
14 36 (12.24%) Statistics
15 35 (11.90%) Actionable Insight
15 35 (11.90%) PyTorch
16 34 (11.56%) AWS
17 32 (10.88%) Azure
17 32 (10.88%) Natural Language Processing
17 32 (10.88%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
17 32 (10.88%) TensorFlow
18 28 (9.52%) Decision-Making
18 28 (9.52%) Generative AI
18 28 (9.52%) Master's Degree
19 27 (9.18%) Apache Spark
19 27 (9.18%) PhD
20 26 (8.84%) Deep Learning
20 26 (8.84%) Project Management
21 25 (8.50%) GCP

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 27 (9.18%) Apache Spark
2 3 (1.02%) SAS
3 1 (0.34%) Apache
Applications
1 4 (1.36%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.68%) SPSS
3 1 (0.34%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 34 (11.56%) AWS
2 32 (10.88%) Azure
3 25 (8.50%) GCP
4 12 (4.08%) SaaS
5 10 (3.40%) Power Platform
6 6 (2.04%) Amazon S3
6 6 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (2.04%) Dataform
6 6 (2.04%) dbt
6 6 (2.04%) Serverless
7 5 (1.70%) Amazon SageMaker
7 5 (1.70%) Azure Machine Learning
7 5 (1.70%) Snowflake
8 3 (1.02%) Salesforce Service Cloud
9 2 (0.68%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (0.68%) Azure AI
9 2 (0.68%) Google Gemini
10 1 (0.34%) Azure Data Factory
10 1 (0.34%) GitHub
10 1 (0.34%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.02%) Broadband
2 1 (0.34%) 5G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (7.14%) Amazon Redshift
2 16 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (3.40%) Power BI
3 10 (3.40%) Tableau
4 6 (2.04%) Looker
4 6 (2.04%) Metabase
5 5 (1.70%) Data Lake
6 3 (1.02%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (1.02%) Apache Iceberg
6 3 (1.02%) Delta Lake
6 3 (1.02%) Flink
6 3 (1.02%) Redis
7 2 (0.68%) Data Mining
7 2 (0.68%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.34%) Big Data
8 1 (0.34%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 17 (5.78%) Git
2 5 (1.70%) MLflow
3 1 (0.34%) JIRA
General
1 93 (31.63%) Finance
2 37 (12.59%) Banking
3 31 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (8.50%) Social Skills
5 20 (6.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 19 (6.46%) Financial Institution
7 16 (5.44%) Public Sector
8 13 (4.42%) Marketing
9 12 (4.08%) Retail
10 7 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
10 7 (2.38%) Law
11 6 (2.04%) Wearables
12 5 (1.70%) Automotive
12 5 (1.70%) Retail Banking
13 4 (1.36%) Games
14 3 (1.02%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (1.02%) Publishing
15 2 (0.68%) Aerospace
15 2 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
16 1 (0.34%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (11.90%) PyTorch
2 32 (10.88%) TensorFlow
3 24 (8.16%) Hugging Face
4 20 (6.80%) scikit-learn
5 18 (6.12%) SpaCy
6 13 (4.42%) XGBoost
7 12 (4.08%) Pandas
8 10 (3.40%) LangChain
8 10 (3.40%) NumPy
9 6 (2.04%) PySpark
10 5 (1.70%) LlamaIndex
11 4 (1.36%) LangGraph
12 3 (1.02%) Kafka
13 1 (0.34%) Kaldi
13 1 (0.34%) Keras
13 1 (0.34%) LightGBM
13 1 (0.34%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 18 (6.12%) e-Learning
2 11 (3.74%) AI Agents
2 11 (3.74%) Algorithms
3 8 (2.72%) Cloud Native
4 6 (2.04%) Credit Risk
5 4 (1.36%) Life Science
6 3 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 2 (0.68%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.34%) Acoustics
8 1 (0.34%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.34%) Clustering
8 1 (0.34%) Educational Technology
8 1 (0.34%) FMCG
Processes & Methodologies
1 294 (100.00%) Data Science
2 152 (51.70%) Machine Learning
3 122 (41.50%) AI
4 86 (29.25%) Analytics
5 68 (23.13%) Mentoring
6 45 (15.31%) CI/CD
7 44 (14.97%) MLOps
8 40 (13.61%) Roadmaps
9 39 (13.27%) LLM
10 37 (12.59%) Software Engineering
11 36 (12.24%) Data Engineering
11 36 (12.24%) Statistics
12 35 (11.90%) Actionable Insight
13 32 (10.88%) Natural Language Processing
13 32 (10.88%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
14 28 (9.52%) Decision-Making
14 28 (9.52%) Generative AI
15 26 (8.84%) Deep Learning
15 26 (8.84%) Project Management
16 23 (7.82%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 117 (39.80%) Python
2 61 (20.75%) SQL
3 13 (4.42%) R
4 6 (2.04%) Julia
Qualifications
1 46 (15.65%) Degree
2 28 (9.52%) Master's Degree
3 27 (9.18%) PhD
4 16 (5.44%) Security Cleared
5 8 (2.72%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.04%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.02%) SC Cleared
8 2 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.34%) Azure Certification
9 1 (0.34%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (7.82%) Data Quality
2 5 (1.70%) EU AI Act
2 5 (1.70%) GDPR
3 4 (1.36%) Actionable Recommendations
4 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 42001
4 2 (0.68%) QA
System Software
1 10 (3.40%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (3.40%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 14 (4.76%) Databricks
2 7 (2.38%) Google
3 6 (2.04%) LexisNexis
4 5 (1.70%) Microsoft
5 3 (1.02%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.02%) Oracle
5 3 (1.02%) PeopleSoft
5 3 (1.02%) Salesforce
6 2 (0.68%) Workday
7 1 (0.34%) Cognizant
7 1 (0.34%) Dataiku