Data Science Job Trends

Data Science
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Data Science skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 131 94
Rank change year-on-year -25 -37 -22
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 898 1,196 1,702
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.51% 2.24% 3.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 2.47% 3.38%
Number of salaries quoted 472 523 1,060
10th Percentile £41,375 £42,500 £42,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £70,000
75th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £90,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £112,500 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £64,750 £57,500
% change year-on-year -7.34% +12.61% -8.00%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Data Science falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 48,033 48,451 50,427
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.00% 90.60% 89.96%
Number of salaries quoted 28,230 23,579 38,463
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,479
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +5.77% -5.45%

Data Science
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Data Science relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Data Science job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Science
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Science

Data Science
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Data Science over the 6 months to 12 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Data Science in the UK

Data Science
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Data Science within the UK over the 6 months to 12 January 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 -16 851 £70,000 - 1,285
London +17 453 £82,500 +13.79% 382
UK excluding London -44 401 £60,000 -7.34% 1,129
Work from Home -42 275 £67,000 - 541
South East 0 167 £57,500 -8.00% 408
North of England -38 87 £60,000 -4.88% 181
North West +17 56 £62,500 -3.10% 74
Midlands -15 54 £60,000 +3.45% 134
South West -11 52 £60,000 -14.29% 157
West Midlands -13 28 £65,250 +18.64% 41
Yorkshire -36 27 £57,500 +1.19% 78
East Midlands -7 26 £40,000 -48.39% 92
East of England +16 23 £70,000 +7.69% 171
Wales +4 9 £40,000 -50.00% 46
Scotland -57 9 £100,000 +76.96% 41
North East -12 4 £62,500 - 30
Northern Ireland -15 1 £40,000 -52.94% 19

Data Science
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 70 (7.80%) Apache Spark
2 27 (3.01%) Apache Airflow
3 23 (2.56%) SharePoint
4 18 (2.00%) Apache
5 9 (1.00%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.78%) SAS
7 6 (0.67%) IIS
8 5 (0.56%) Confluence
9 3 (0.33%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.22%) Luigi
11 1 (0.11%) CMS
11 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 70 (7.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (0.67%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.33%) Stata
5 1 (0.11%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (0.67%) Salesforce CRM
1 6 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.45%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.11%) Odoo
4 1 (0.11%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.11%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 271 (30.18%) Azure
2 238 (26.50%) AWS
3 156 (17.37%) GCP
4 138 (15.37%) Power Platform
5 43 (4.79%) Snowflake
6 38 (4.23%) Azure AI
7 35 (3.90%) Azure Machine Learning
8 32 (3.56%) SaaS
9 31 (3.45%) Amazon SageMaker
10 30 (3.34%) Vertex AI
11 27 (3.01%) Serverless
12 26 (2.90%) Azure Data Factory
13 25 (2.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 23 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
14 23 (2.56%) GitHub
15 22 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
16 20 (2.23%) dbt
17 18 (2.00%) Microsoft 365
18 15 (1.67%) Amazon S3
19 14 (1.56%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 15 (1.67%) Broadband
2 10 (1.11%) 4G
2 10 (1.11%) BGP
2 10 (1.11%) Cisco IOS
2 10 (1.11%) Ethernet VPN
2 10 (1.11%) IOS XR
2 10 (1.11%) MPLS
3 7 (0.78%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.56%) Firewall
5 4 (0.45%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.45%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.45%) Modbus
5 4 (0.45%) Network Security
5 4 (0.45%) VLAN
5 4 (0.45%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.45%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.33%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.33%) MQTT
7 2 (0.22%) Internet
8 1 (0.11%) Value-Added Service
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (14.59%) Power BI
2 120 (13.36%) Data Warehouse
3 105 (11.69%) Tableau
4 77 (8.57%) Data Lake
5 44 (4.90%) Big Data
5 44 (4.90%) NoSQL
6 42 (4.68%) BigQuery
7 40 (4.45%) Metadata
8 35 (3.90%) SQL Server
9 32 (3.56%) Amazon Redshift
10 30 (3.34%) Hadoop
11 26 (2.90%) Data Mining
11 26 (2.90%) DynamoDB
12 24 (2.67%) Elasticsearch
13 23 (2.56%) MongoDB
13 23 (2.56%) MySQL
14 20 (2.23%) Relational Database
15 19 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
16 17 (1.89%) Delta Lake
17 14 (1.56%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 51 (5.68%) Git
2 33 (3.67%) MLflow
3 18 (2.00%) ERwin
4 12 (1.34%) GitLab
5 7 (0.78%) JIRA
5 7 (0.78%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.56%) Burp Suite
7 4 (0.45%) ER Studio
7 4 (0.45%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.11%) JUnit
8 1 (0.11%) MSBuild
8 1 (0.11%) Selenium
8 1 (0.11%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.11%) TestNG
General
1 334 (37.19%) Finance
2 268 (29.84%) Social Skills
3 198 (22.05%) Analytical Skills
4 110 (12.25%) Marketing
5 90 (10.02%) Banking
6 72 (8.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 69 (7.68%) Pharmaceutical
8 66 (7.35%) Law
9 57 (6.35%) Retail
10 49 (5.46%) Financial Institution
11 32 (3.56%) Manufacturing
12 27 (3.01%) Public Sector
13 24 (2.67%) Legal
14 22 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
15 17 (1.89%) Telecoms
16 15 (1.67%) Health Technology
16 15 (1.67%) Publishing
17 14 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
18 13 (1.45%) Tech for Good
19 12 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 201 (22.38%) Senior
2 168 (18.71%) Data Scientist
3 147 (16.37%) Lead
4 123 (13.70%) Data Engineer
5 88 (9.80%) Analyst
6 67 (7.46%) Data Analyst
7 62 (6.90%) Developer
8 61 (6.79%) Senior Data Scientist
9 55 (6.12%) Architect
10 42 (4.68%) Consultant
10 42 (4.68%) Senior Data Engineer
11 39 (4.34%) Software Engineer
12 35 (3.90%) Data Architect
13 23 (2.56%) Senior Developer
14 20 (2.23%) Senior Manager
15 18 (2.00%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 18 (2.00%) Python Developer
16 17 (1.89%) Data Science Engineer
16 17 (1.89%) Python Engineer
16 17 (1.89%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (7.57%) PyTorch
2 63 (7.02%) TensorFlow
3 47 (5.23%) scikit-learn
4 43 (4.79%) Pandas
4 43 (4.79%) PySpark
5 42 (4.68%) React
6 32 (3.56%) LangChain
7 23 (2.56%) RESTful
8 22 (2.45%) NumPy
9 18 (2.00%) Kafka
10 16 (1.78%) Hugging Face
11 15 (1.67%) FastAPI
12 12 (1.34%) Swagger
13 11 (1.22%) Django
13 11 (1.22%) Flask
13 11 (1.22%) HTML
14 10 (1.11%) AngularJS
14 10 (1.11%) Jinja
14 10 (1.11%) REST
14 10 (1.11%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 93 (10.36%) Life Science
2 84 (9.35%) Algorithms
3 47 (5.23%) Product Ownership
4 43 (4.79%) Self-Motivation
5 38 (4.23%) Cloud Native
6 37 (4.12%) Management Information System
7 33 (3.67%) Distributed Systems
8 26 (2.90%) Data Structures
9 23 (2.56%) Onboarding
10 21 (2.34%) Pharmacovigilance
11 18 (2.00%) Reinsurance
12 16 (1.78%) Credit Risk
13 15 (1.67%) AI Agents
13 15 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
14 13 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (1.45%) Omics
15 11 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
15 11 (1.22%) Social Media
16 10 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
17 9 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.11%) Linux
2 6 (0.67%) Unix
3 4 (0.45%) Android
3 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.45%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 469 (52.23%) Analytics
2 458 (51.00%) AI
3 454 (50.56%) Machine Learning
4 221 (24.61%) Problem-Solving
5 219 (24.39%) Agile
6 212 (23.61%) Computer Science
7 196 (21.83%) Decision-Making
8 189 (21.05%) Business Intelligence
9 178 (19.82%) Data Engineering
10 166 (18.49%) Data Modelling
11 155 (17.26%) Data Governance
12 154 (17.15%) Data Pipeline
13 150 (16.70%) Visualisation
14 149 (16.59%) Data Analysis
14 149 (16.59%) Mentoring
15 147 (16.37%) Roadmaps
16 145 (16.15%) ETL
17 138 (15.37%) Statistics
18 131 (14.59%) CI/CD
19 125 (13.92%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 509 (56.68%) Python
2 306 (34.08%) SQL
3 78 (8.69%) R
4 66 (7.35%) Java
5 45 (5.01%) Scala
6 22 (2.45%) Go
6 22 (2.45%) TypeScript
7 21 (2.34%) JavaScript
8 16 (1.78%) VBA
9 14 (1.56%) C++
10 13 (1.45%) C#
11 12 (1.34%) MATLAB
12 11 (1.22%) Rust
13 9 (1.00%) ANSI SQL
14 7 (0.78%) Bicep
14 7 (0.78%) PHP
15 5 (0.56%) Bash
15 5 (0.56%) C
15 5 (0.56%) PowerShell
16 3 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 353 (39.31%) Degree
2 163 (18.15%) Master's Degree
3 90 (10.02%) PhD
4 86 (9.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (9.35%) Security Cleared
6 67 (7.46%) SC Cleared
7 41 (4.57%) Numerate Degree
8 22 (2.45%) DV Cleared
9 18 (2.00%) MBA
10 16 (1.78%) DBS Check
11 10 (1.11%) AWS Certification
11 10 (1.11%) Azure Certification
11 10 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 8 (0.89%) PMI Certification
13 7 (0.78%) APMP
13 7 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
13 7 (0.78%) PMP
14 6 (0.67%) CFA
15 5 (0.56%) Postgraduate
16 3 (0.33%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (16.59%) Data Quality
2 53 (5.90%) GDPR
3 43 (4.79%) GxP
4 36 (4.01%) Accessibility
5 27 (3.01%) QA
6 23 (2.56%) EU AI Act
7 22 (2.45%) Solvency II
8 21 (2.34%) HIPAA
8 21 (2.34%) PSD2
9 10 (1.11%) CDISC
9 10 (1.11%) HL7
10 7 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 6 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.45%) NIST
13 3 (0.33%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 1 (0.11%) FINRA
System Software
1 62 (6.90%) Docker
2 3 (0.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 58 (6.46%) Kubernetes
2 22 (2.45%) Terraform
3 7 (0.78%) Ansible
4 4 (0.45%) Kubeflow
4 4 (0.45%) Nessus
4 4 (0.45%) Nmap
5 2 (0.22%) Argo
5 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.22%) Puppet
6 1 (0.11%) Nagios
Vendors
1 114 (12.69%) Databricks
2 80 (8.91%) Google
3 77 (8.57%) Microsoft
4 33 (3.67%) Alteryx
5 31 (3.45%) Bloomberg
5 31 (3.45%) OpenAI
6 27 (3.01%) Oracle
7 25 (2.78%) Salesforce
8 19 (2.12%) SAP
9 18 (2.00%) Cisco
10 15 (1.67%) Informatica
11 11 (1.22%) Talend
12 10 (1.11%) Palantir
13 8 (0.89%) Foundry
14 5 (0.56%) BT
14 5 (0.56%) Red Hat
15 4 (0.45%) Fortinet
15 4 (0.45%) IBM
15 4 (0.45%) Palo Alto
15 4 (0.45%) Splunk