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 21 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 156 142 121
Rank change year-on-year -14 -21 -43
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,196 1,056 2,244
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.30% 2.40% 2.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.76% 2.58% 2.72%
Number of salaries quoted 660 532 1,262
10th Percentile £45,000 £42,709 £42,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £71,991 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.77% +10.76% -7.14%
75th Percentile £90,000 £95,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £115,000 £114,950
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £63,652 £57,500
% change year-on-year +2.12% +10.70% -11.54%

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 67,989 40,970 82,440
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.70% 93.29% 84.80%
Number of salaries quoted 43,964 22,120 59,644
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,750 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,033 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.39% +5.51% -10.10%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,887 £50,000
% change year-on-year +1.18% +3.77% -9.09%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 0 1,112 £70,000 -3.11% 926
London -1 550 £80,000 -3.03% 508
UK excluding London -21 549 £65,000 +2.12% 643
Work from Home +33 403 £66,720 +4.25% 466
North of England +23 154 £70,000 +18.14% 144
South East -30 135 £70,000 +16.67% 224
North West +63 113 £72,966 +24.73% 80
South West -50 110 £60,000 -14.29% 89
Midlands -7 91 £60,000 +4.35% 76
East Midlands +12 52 £62,500 -10.71% 47
East of England 0 43 £86,725 +19.62% 70
West Midlands -47 39 £55,000 -4.24% 29
Yorkshire -41 34 £55,000 -13.59% 47
Scotland -40 10 £80,000 +23.08% 30
North East -37 7 £80,000 +39.74% 18
Wales -33 3 £39,511 -50.61% 18
Northern Ireland -39 3 - - 11

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 93 (7.78%) Apache Spark
2 72 (6.02%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.01%) Apache
4 22 (1.84%) ArcGIS
5 17 (1.42%) SharePoint
6 15 (1.25%) SAS
7 13 (1.09%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.42%) Confluence
8 5 (0.42%) GeoServer
8 5 (0.42%) IIS
9 3 (0.25%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.25%) CMS
10 1 (0.084%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.084%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.084%) WordPress
Applications
1 37 (3.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.67%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.17%) SPSS
6 1 (0.084%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.084%) Trello
Business Applications
1 4 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.084%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.084%) FIS Private Capital Suite
2 1 (0.084%) HFM
2 1 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.084%) SAP PLM
2 1 (0.084%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 324 (27.09%) AWS
2 297 (24.83%) Azure
3 208 (17.39%) GCP
4 139 (11.62%) Power Platform
5 84 (7.02%) Snowflake
6 56 (4.68%) dbt
7 48 (4.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 44 (3.68%) Azure Machine Learning
9 38 (3.18%) Azure Data Factory
10 35 (2.93%) SaaS
11 29 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (2.42%) Serverless
12 21 (1.76%) Amazon S3
12 21 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 17 (1.42%) Dagster
14 16 (1.34%) Amazon SageMaker
14 16 (1.34%) Azure AI
14 16 (1.34%) GitHub
15 13 (1.09%) Vertex AI
16 12 (1.00%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 93 (7.78%) Broadband
2 11 (0.92%) 4G
2 11 (0.92%) BGP
2 11 (0.92%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (0.92%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (0.92%) IOS XR
2 11 (0.92%) MPLS
3 6 (0.50%) 5G
3 6 (0.50%) Internet
4 5 (0.42%) Software-Defined Radio
5 4 (0.33%) HTTP
6 2 (0.17%) Firewall
6 2 (0.17%) MQTT
6 2 (0.17%) Tactical Data Link
6 2 (0.17%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.084%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.084%) LTE
7 1 (0.084%) TCAP
7 1 (0.084%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.084%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (11.29%) Data Warehouse
2 133 (11.12%) Power BI
3 87 (7.27%) Tableau
4 86 (7.19%) Data Lake
5 69 (5.77%) BigQuery
6 64 (5.35%) Amazon Redshift
7 61 (5.10%) Elasticsearch
8 51 (4.26%) NoSQL
9 49 (4.10%) Looker
10 41 (3.43%) Metadata
11 38 (3.18%) Big Data
11 38 (3.18%) MongoDB
11 38 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
12 37 (3.09%) GIS
13 31 (2.59%) Relational Database
14 27 (2.26%) Delta Lake
15 26 (2.17%) QGIS
16 25 (2.09%) MySQL
17 24 (2.01%) Snowflake Schema
18 23 (1.92%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 88 (7.36%) Git
2 56 (4.68%) MLflow
3 13 (1.09%) GitLab
4 11 (0.92%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.92%) JIRA
5 4 (0.33%) Selenium
6 2 (0.17%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
7 1 (0.084%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.084%) JUnit
7 1 (0.084%) TeamCity
General
1 241 (20.15%) Social Skills
2 234 (19.57%) Analytical Skills
3 221 (18.48%) Finance
4 96 (8.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 69 (5.77%) Marketing
6 53 (4.43%) Retail
7 49 (4.10%) Public Sector
8 41 (3.43%) Law
9 39 (3.26%) Banking
10 26 (2.17%) Pharmaceutical
11 25 (2.09%) Advertising
11 25 (2.09%) Legal
12 17 (1.42%) Financial Institution
12 17 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 14 (1.17%) Games
14 14 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
14 14 (1.17%) Telecoms
15 11 (0.92%) Agriculture
16 9 (0.75%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 411 (34.36%) Data Scientist
2 291 (24.33%) Senior
3 196 (16.39%) Senior Data Scientist
4 164 (13.71%) Data Engineer
5 136 (11.37%) Lead
6 74 (6.19%) Software Engineer
7 71 (5.94%) Consultant
8 58 (4.85%) Developer
9 53 (4.43%) Analyst
10 48 (4.01%) Lead Data Scientist
11 42 (3.51%) Senior Data Engineer
12 35 (2.93%) Data Analyst
13 33 (2.76%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
14 31 (2.59%) Systems Engineer
15 30 (2.51%) Architect
15 30 (2.51%) Scala Engineer
16 29 (2.42%) Python Engineer
16 29 (2.42%) Research Scientist
17 28 (2.34%) Product Specialist
18 27 (2.26%) Data Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (11.62%) PyTorch
2 101 (8.44%) TensorFlow
3 66 (5.52%) scikit-learn
4 52 (4.35%) Kafka
5 50 (4.18%) LangChain
6 47 (3.93%) gRPC
7 40 (3.34%) PySpark
8 36 (3.01%) Pandas
8 36 (3.01%) React
9 29 (2.42%) LlamaIndex
10 26 (2.17%) RESTful
11 25 (2.09%) pgvector
12 22 (1.84%) REST
13 21 (1.76%) Django
14 19 (1.59%) HTML
15 16 (1.34%) CSS
15 16 (1.34%) FastAPI
16 15 (1.25%) Hugging Face
17 14 (1.17%) NumPy
17 14 (1.17%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 109 (9.11%) Algorithms
2 73 (6.10%) Distributed Systems
3 64 (5.35%) Video\Live Streaming
4 54 (4.52%) Cloud Native
5 53 (4.43%) Over-the-Top Content
6 44 (3.68%) Product Ownership
7 40 (3.34%) Life Science
8 32 (2.68%) Clustering
9 31 (2.59%) Data Structures
10 28 (2.34%) Management Information System
10 28 (2.34%) Social Media
11 25 (2.09%) AI Agents
11 25 (2.09%) Public Cloud
12 19 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
13 16 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (1.09%) Onboarding
15 11 (0.92%) Low-Code
16 10 (0.84%) Virtual Team
17 9 (0.75%) Hackathon
18 8 (0.67%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 12 (1.00%) Linux
2 3 (0.25%) Windows
3 2 (0.17%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 551 (46.07%) AI
2 545 (45.57%) Machine Learning
3 495 (41.39%) Analytics
4 237 (19.82%) Problem-Solving
5 231 (19.31%) Data Engineering
6 221 (18.48%) Decision-Making
7 220 (18.39%) CI/CD
8 216 (18.06%) Agile
9 197 (16.47%) Data Pipeline
10 191 (15.97%) Business Intelligence
11 186 (15.55%) Software Engineering
12 167 (13.96%) Data Modelling
13 161 (13.46%) Mentoring
14 154 (12.88%) Computer Science
15 147 (12.29%) MLOps
16 146 (12.21%) ETL
17 145 (12.12%) Visualisation
18 144 (12.04%) Generative AI
19 139 (11.62%) Roadmaps
19 139 (11.62%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 624 (52.17%) Python
2 316 (26.42%) SQL
3 99 (8.28%) Scala
4 83 (6.94%) Java
5 66 (5.52%) R
6 63 (5.27%) Go
7 31 (2.59%) C++
7 31 (2.59%) JavaScript
8 19 (1.59%) C#
9 17 (1.42%) VBA
10 15 (1.25%) Bash
10 15 (1.25%) TypeScript
11 13 (1.09%) C
12 7 (0.59%) Julia
12 7 (0.59%) T-SQL
13 6 (0.50%) Bicep
13 6 (0.50%) PHP
13 6 (0.50%) PowerShell
14 5 (0.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 5 (0.42%) Rust
Qualifications
1 290 (24.25%) Degree
2 126 (10.54%) Security Cleared
3 89 (7.44%) Master's Degree
4 65 (5.43%) DV Cleared
5 59 (4.93%) PhD
6 52 (4.35%) SC Cleared
7 48 (4.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 36 (3.01%) DBS Check
9 19 (1.59%) Azure Certification
10 14 (1.17%) MBA
11 8 (0.67%) APMP
11 8 (0.67%) Microsoft Certification
11 8 (0.67%) Postgraduate
12 4 (0.33%) BPSS Clearance
12 4 (0.33%) Numerate Degree
13 3 (0.25%) CISSP
14 2 (0.17%) CompTIA Security+
14 2 (0.17%) GIAC
14 2 (0.17%) Oracle Certification
14 2 (0.17%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (11.45%) Data Quality
2 46 (3.85%) Accessibility
2 46 (3.85%) GDPR
3 39 (3.26%) QA
4 25 (2.09%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 12 (1.00%) GxP
6 11 (0.92%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.25%) PERC
8 2 (0.17%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.17%) IFRS
8 2 (0.17%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.17%) Solvency II
9 1 (0.084%) GMP
9 1 (0.084%) GRC
9 1 (0.084%) NCSC
9 1 (0.084%) NIST
System Software
1 115 (9.62%) Docker
2 3 (0.25%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.17%) Firmware
3 2 (0.17%) IAG
4 1 (0.084%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 68 (5.69%) Kubernetes
2 46 (3.85%) Terraform
3 9 (0.75%) Kubeflow
4 3 (0.25%) Ansible
4 3 (0.25%) Argo
5 2 (0.17%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.17%) Computer Incident Response Team
5 2 (0.17%) Kibana
6 1 (0.084%) Nagios
Vendors
1 162 (13.55%) Databricks
2 61 (5.10%) Microsoft
3 60 (5.02%) Google
4 48 (4.01%) Dell
5 45 (3.76%) Typelevel
6 30 (2.51%) Informatica
7 25 (2.09%) Teradata
8 24 (2.01%) Denodo
8 24 (2.01%) OpenAI
9 23 (1.92%) Cloudera
10 19 (1.59%) Cisco
11 17 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 14 (1.17%) Oracle
13 12 (1.00%) Palantir
14 8 (0.67%) Foundry
15 7 (0.59%) ServiceNow
16 6 (0.50%) Talend
17 5 (0.42%) BT
18 4 (0.33%) Alteryx
18 4 (0.33%) Fortinet