Data Science Contracts

Data Science
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Data Science skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Data Science over the 6 months to 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 182 218 179
Rank change year-on-year +36 -39 -12
Contract jobs citing Data Science 578 746 1,460
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.34% 1.26% 1.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.55% 1.41% 1.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 412 451 964
10th Percentile £355 £413 £407
25th Percentile £435 £488 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £580
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -5.17% +5.45%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £654
90th Percentile £750 £788 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £540 £543
% change year-on-year -9.49% -0.46% +4.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 24 35
10th Percentile £19.54 - £25.20
25th Percentile £21.49 £19.00 £30.13
Median hourly rate £35.50 £28.58 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.21% -31.95% +57.13%
75th Percentile £50.00 £52.56 £56.25
90th Percentile £68.75 £57.17 £65.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £22.16 £42.00
% change year-on-year +1.53% -47.24% +71.43%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Data Science is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,268 53,074 80,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.35% 89.85% 90.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,016 36,805 56,451
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,439 1,749 1,911
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.95 £35.80 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.42% +43.20% +2.04%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +7.14% +75.00% -6.98%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Data Science as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Data Science.

Daily rate trend for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Data Science.

Hourly rate trend for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 5 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Science within the UK over the 6 months to 5 May 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +27 497 £550 -2.22% 787
London +39 337 £550 -8.33% 517
Work from Home +66 222 £540 -1.82% 383
UK excluding London -9 150 £489 -9.49% 294
North of England +19 35 £488 -22.00% 63
South East -1 34 £475 -13.64% 88
Midlands +3 28 £488 -9.72% 35
East of England +27 27 £538 +19.44% 32
North West +34 23 £488 -25.00% 38
West Midlands -4 21 £488 -9.72% 18
South West +8 15 £563 +7.91% 36
Yorkshire +1 11 £490 -24.62% 20
Wales +20 9 £412 -28.35% 10
Scotland +27 7 £488 -2.50% 23
East Midlands +21 7 £375 -37.50% 17
North East +16 1 - - 5

Data Science
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 36 (6.23%) Apache Spark
2 30 (5.19%) Apache Airflow
3 16 (2.77%) Apache
4 8 (1.38%) Jupyter
5 6 (1.04%) Confluence
5 6 (1.04%) SAS
6 2 (0.35%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.17%) CMS
7 1 (0.17%) Luigi
Applications
1 12 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (1.90%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.87%) Chatbot
4 5 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.69%) SPSS
6 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
7 2 (0.35%) CPLEX
7 2 (0.35%) Simulink
8 1 (0.17%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.17%) Blender
8 1 (0.17%) Houdini
8 1 (0.17%) Maya
8 1 (0.17%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 7 (1.21%) Distributed Ledger
2 3 (0.52%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.52%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.35%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.17%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 125 (21.63%) Azure
2 100 (17.30%) AWS
3 90 (15.57%) GCP
4 88 (15.22%) Power Platform
5 28 (4.84%) Serverless
6 23 (3.98%) Azure Data Factory
6 23 (3.98%) Vertex AI
7 21 (3.63%) Amazon S3
7 21 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 17 (2.94%) AWS Lambda
8 17 (2.94%) Snowflake
9 15 (2.60%) GitHub
10 14 (2.42%) Azure Machine Learning
11 11 (1.90%) Amazon Kinesis
11 11 (1.90%) Cloud Computing
11 11 (1.90%) dbt
12 10 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (1.73%) Google Compute Engine
13 9 (1.56%) Amazon EMR
14 8 (1.38%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.04%) Internet
2 5 (0.87%) LAN
2 5 (0.87%) WAN
3 3 (0.52%) Network Security
4 1 (0.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (14.71%) Power BI
2 74 (12.80%) Data Warehouse
3 69 (11.94%) Big Data
4 60 (10.38%) Tableau
5 38 (6.57%) Data Lake
6 37 (6.40%) BigQuery
7 27 (4.67%) Hadoop
8 24 (4.15%) Amazon Redshift
9 21 (3.63%) Data Mining
10 16 (2.77%) Metadata
11 14 (2.42%) SQL Server
12 13 (2.25%) BusinessObjects
12 13 (2.25%) NoSQL
13 11 (1.90%) Looker
14 10 (1.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
15 9 (1.56%) Relational Database
16 7 (1.21%) Presto
17 6 (1.04%) Amazon Athena
17 6 (1.04%) Flink
Development Applications
1 32 (5.54%) Git
2 23 (3.98%) JIRA
3 12 (2.08%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.38%) GitLab
5 7 (1.21%) MLflow
6 4 (0.69%) Selenium
7 3 (0.52%) ERwin
7 3 (0.52%) Poetry
7 3 (0.52%) RStudio
8 2 (0.35%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.35%) kappa
8 2 (0.35%) Robot Framework
8 2 (0.35%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.17%) CMake
9 1 (0.17%) LabVIEW
9 1 (0.17%) Xcode
General
1 161 (27.85%) Social Skills
2 121 (20.93%) Analytical Skills
3 99 (17.13%) Finance
4 45 (7.79%) Public Sector
5 39 (6.75%) Marketing
6 20 (3.46%) Banking
7 19 (3.29%) Pharmaceutical
8 18 (3.11%) Retail
9 17 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (2.60%) Legal
11 14 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 9 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 8 (1.38%) Telecoms
14 7 (1.21%) Advertising
14 7 (1.21%) Manufacturing
15 6 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 6 (1.04%) Police
16 5 (0.87%) Publishing
17 4 (0.69%) Games
17 4 (0.69%) Law
Job Titles
1 146 (25.26%) Data Scientist
2 66 (11.42%) Data Engineer
3 64 (11.07%) Senior
4 61 (10.55%) Analyst
5 52 (9.00%) Developer
6 51 (8.82%) Architect
7 40 (6.92%) Lead
8 39 (6.75%) Data Analyst
9 22 (3.81%) Machine Learning Engineer
9 22 (3.81%) Senior Data Scientist
10 20 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
11 19 (3.29%) Data Manager
12 17 (2.94%) GCP Engineer
13 16 (2.77%) Data Architect
14 14 (2.42%) Consultant
14 14 (2.42%) Full Stack Developer
15 12 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
15 12 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
16 11 (1.90%) Azure Engineer
17 10 (1.73%) User Researcher
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (7.79%) PySpark
2 43 (7.44%) Pandas
3 38 (6.57%) scikit-learn
4 32 (5.54%) TensorFlow
5 24 (4.15%) NumPy
6 20 (3.46%) PyTorch
7 17 (2.94%) Kafka
7 17 (2.94%) React
8 11 (1.90%) .NET
8 11 (1.90%) HTML
9 9 (1.56%) AngularJS
9 9 (1.56%) CSS
10 8 (1.38%) Django
10 8 (1.38%) Plotly
11 7 (1.21%) Matplotlib
12 6 (1.04%) ASP.NET
12 6 (1.04%) Flask
12 6 (1.04%) Middleware
12 6 (1.04%) REST
12 6 (1.04%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 84 (14.53%) Algorithms
2 24 (4.15%) Management Information System
3 23 (3.98%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.46%) Product Ownership
5 11 (1.90%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 10 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
6 10 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (1.56%) IoT
7 9 (1.56%) Reference Data
8 8 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (1.21%) Blockchain
9 7 (1.21%) Credit Risk
9 7 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (1.21%) Life Science
9 7 (1.21%) Multi-touch
9 7 (1.21%) NHS
10 6 (1.04%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.04%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.04%) Onboarding
11 5 (0.87%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.25%) Linux
1 13 (2.25%) Windows
2 5 (0.87%) Unix
3 1 (0.17%) Android
3 1 (0.17%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (38.41%) Machine Learning
2 193 (33.39%) Analytics
3 129 (22.32%) Artificial Intelligence
4 123 (21.28%) Agile
5 122 (21.11%) Data Analysis
6 120 (20.76%) Computer Science
7 116 (20.07%) Data Modelling
8 114 (19.72%) Visualisation
9 101 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
10 95 (16.44%) Business Intelligence
11 90 (15.57%) Data Pipeline
12 87 (15.05%) DevOps
12 87 (15.05%) ETL
13 78 (13.49%) Data Visualisation
14 73 (12.63%) Data Engineering
15 69 (11.94%) Mathematics
16 67 (11.59%) Statistics
17 63 (10.90%) Decision-Making
18 60 (10.38%) CI/CD
19 56 (9.69%) Data Management
Programming Languages
1 317 (54.84%) Python
2 205 (35.47%) SQL
3 65 (11.25%) R
4 32 (5.54%) Java
5 18 (3.11%) Scala
6 16 (2.77%) Bash
6 16 (2.77%) JavaScript
7 15 (2.60%) C#
8 10 (1.73%) MATLAB
9 7 (1.21%) C++
10 6 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 6 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.87%) PowerShell
11 5 (0.87%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.69%) Bicep
13 3 (0.52%) VBA
14 1 (0.17%) C
14 1 (0.17%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.17%) Ruby
14 1 (0.17%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 146 (25.26%) Degree
2 68 (11.76%) Computer Science Degree
3 66 (11.42%) Security Cleared
4 51 (8.82%) SC Cleared
5 38 (6.57%) Master's Degree
6 17 (2.94%) PhD
7 15 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
8 13 (2.25%) DV Cleared
9 7 (1.21%) Numerate Degree
10 6 (1.04%) PMI Certification
10 6 (1.04%) PMP
11 4 (0.69%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.69%) CISSP
11 4 (0.69%) Postgraduate
12 3 (0.52%) CFA
12 3 (0.52%) MBA
12 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
13 2 (0.35%) AWS Certification
13 2 (0.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 1 (0.17%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (9.69%) Data Quality
2 21 (3.63%) QA
3 11 (1.90%) Accessibility
3 11 (1.90%) Actionable Recommendations
4 10 (1.73%) GDPR
5 6 (1.04%) NCSC
6 5 (0.87%) GxP
6 5 (0.87%) SLA
7 4 (0.69%) PMO
8 3 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.52%) WCAG
9 2 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 23 (3.98%) Docker
2 4 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (0.35%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 47 (8.13%) Terraform
2 30 (5.19%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.04%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.52%) SysTrack
Vendors
1 62 (10.73%) Databricks
2 45 (7.79%) Microsoft
3 24 (4.15%) Google
4 14 (2.42%) Oracle
5 11 (1.90%) SAP
6 10 (1.73%) Foundry
6 10 (1.73%) Palantir
7 8 (1.38%) Alteryx
8 7 (1.21%) OpenAI
9 6 (1.04%) ServiceNow
10 5 (0.87%) Ab Initio
10 5 (0.87%) Informatica
11 3 (0.52%) Citrix
11 3 (0.52%) Cloudera
11 3 (0.52%) Hyperion
11 3 (0.52%) New Relic
11 3 (0.52%) Salesforce
11 3 (0.52%) Sparx
11 3 (0.52%) Splunk
11 3 (0.52%) Teradata