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 2 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 157 124 114
Rank change year-on-year -33 -10 -44
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,094 1,015 2,255
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.37% 2.48% 2.51%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.79% 2.67% 2.90%
Number of salaries quoted 566 522 1,300
10th Percentile £44,750 £44,590 £42,225
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,932 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.33% +3.70% -6.90%
75th Percentile £90,000 £91,250 £87,813
90th Percentile £103,750 £115,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year - +8.70% -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 61,153 38,054 77,716
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.62% 93.06% 86.41%
Number of salaries quoted 37,653 22,322 57,935
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,097
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 -26 1,016 £71,025 +1.46% 737
London +19 535 £80,000 - 384
UK excluding London -68 483 £62,500 - 486
Work from Home -18 342 £67,500 +5.47% 272
South East -30 156 £63,750 +6.25% 166
North of England -57 104 £65,000 +2.12% 119
South West -45 83 £60,000 -14.29% 69
Midlands -32 79 £57,500 - 65
North West +1 71 £70,000 +9.59% 63
West Midlands -26 41 £65,000 +44.44% 27
East Midlands -35 38 £45,000 -38.98% 38
East of England -17 36 £86,725 +35.51% 34
Yorkshire -69 28 £60,000 -5.74% 37
Scotland -67 13 £90,000 +60.00% 21
Wales -18 9 £40,000 -50.00% 15
North East -25 5 £64,610 +3.38% 21
Northern Ireland -40 3 - - 6

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 83 (7.59%) Apache Spark
2 75 (6.86%) Apache Airflow
3 23 (2.10%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.01%) ArcGIS
5 20 (1.83%) Apache
6 10 (0.91%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.64%) SAS
8 5 (0.46%) Confluence
8 5 (0.46%) IIS
9 4 (0.37%) GeoServer
10 3 (0.27%) Apache Superset
10 3 (0.27%) CMS
11 1 (0.091%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.091%) WordPress
Applications
1 56 (5.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.37%) Chatbot
2 4 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
3 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.091%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.091%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.091%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.091%) Odoo
3 1 (0.091%) SAP PLM
3 1 (0.091%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 335 (30.62%) AWS
2 322 (29.43%) Azure
3 210 (19.20%) GCP
4 168 (15.36%) Power Platform
5 96 (8.78%) Snowflake
6 59 (5.39%) dbt
7 46 (4.20%) Azure Machine Learning
7 46 (4.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 37 (3.38%) Azure AI
9 36 (3.29%) Amazon SageMaker
10 33 (3.02%) Vertex AI
11 32 (2.93%) Azure Data Factory
12 30 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
13 24 (2.19%) GitHub
13 24 (2.19%) SaaS
14 20 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (1.74%) Dagster
16 17 (1.55%) PowerApps
16 17 (1.55%) Serverless
17 16 (1.46%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 82 (7.50%) Broadband
2 11 (1.01%) 4G
2 11 (1.01%) BGP
2 11 (1.01%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.01%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.01%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.01%) MPLS
3 3 (0.27%) HTTP
3 3 (0.27%) Internet
3 3 (0.27%) Software-Defined Radio
3 3 (0.27%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.18%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.18%) MQTT
4 2 (0.18%) Tactical Data Link
5 1 (0.091%) Bluetooth
5 1 (0.091%) Firewall
5 1 (0.091%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.091%) TCAP
5 1 (0.091%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.091%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (14.72%) Power BI
2 146 (13.35%) Data Warehouse
3 127 (11.61%) Tableau
4 103 (9.41%) Data Lake
5 75 (6.86%) BigQuery
6 57 (5.21%) Elasticsearch
7 52 (4.75%) Amazon Redshift
8 50 (4.57%) NoSQL
9 48 (4.39%) Looker
10 47 (4.30%) Metadata
11 36 (3.29%) GIS
11 36 (3.29%) MongoDB
12 35 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
13 33 (3.02%) Big Data
14 28 (2.56%) Data Mining
15 27 (2.47%) QGIS
16 26 (2.38%) SQL Server
17 25 (2.29%) Snowflake Schema
18 23 (2.10%) Delta Lake
19 22 (2.01%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 76 (6.95%) Git
2 58 (5.30%) MLflow
3 14 (1.28%) GitLab
4 10 (0.91%) JIRA
5 7 (0.64%) ERwin
5 7 (0.64%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.64%) PowerDesigner
6 4 (0.37%) ER Studio
7 3 (0.27%) Selenium
8 2 (0.18%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.091%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.091%) Metasploit
9 1 (0.091%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.091%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 278 (25.41%) Finance
2 265 (24.22%) Social Skills
3 247 (22.58%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (9.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 85 (7.77%) Marketing
6 83 (7.59%) Banking
7 67 (6.12%) Retail
8 58 (5.30%) Pharmaceutical
9 51 (4.66%) Public Sector
10 40 (3.66%) Law
11 35 (3.20%) Financial Institution
12 25 (2.29%) Legal
13 24 (2.19%) Manufacturing
14 16 (1.46%) Advertising
14 16 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
15 14 (1.28%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.01%) Agriculture
16 11 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
17 8 (0.73%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 261 (23.86%) Data Scientist
2 232 (21.21%) Senior
3 158 (14.44%) Data Engineer
4 143 (13.07%) Lead
5 110 (10.05%) Senior Data Scientist
6 83 (7.59%) Analyst
7 79 (7.22%) Consultant
8 67 (6.12%) Software Engineer
9 65 (5.94%) Data Analyst
10 56 (5.12%) Developer
11 48 (4.39%) Senior Data Engineer
12 33 (3.02%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
13 32 (2.93%) Data Consultant
14 31 (2.83%) Architect
14 31 (2.83%) Systems Engineer
15 30 (2.74%) Scala Engineer
16 29 (2.65%) Lead Data Scientist
17 27 (2.47%) Python Engineer
18 25 (2.29%) Product Specialist
19 24 (2.19%) Senior Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (12.34%) PyTorch
2 99 (9.05%) TensorFlow
3 68 (6.22%) scikit-learn
4 50 (4.57%) LangChain
5 48 (4.39%) Kafka
6 47 (4.30%) gRPC
7 36 (3.29%) React
8 35 (3.20%) PySpark
9 28 (2.56%) Pandas
10 25 (2.29%) LlamaIndex
11 24 (2.19%) pgvector
12 22 (2.01%) Django
13 21 (1.92%) RESTful
14 20 (1.83%) HTML
15 16 (1.46%) CSS
15 16 (1.46%) FastAPI
16 15 (1.37%) REST
17 13 (1.19%) .NET
17 13 (1.19%) Node.js
18 12 (1.10%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 96 (8.78%) Algorithms
2 82 (7.50%) Life Science
3 70 (6.40%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (5.39%) Video\Live Streaming
5 50 (4.57%) Over-the-Top Content
6 49 (4.48%) Product Ownership
7 48 (4.39%) Cloud Native
8 36 (3.29%) Management Information System
9 29 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (2.47%) Data Structures
11 26 (2.38%) Clustering
12 25 (2.29%) AI Agents
12 25 (2.29%) Public Cloud
13 24 (2.19%) Social Media
14 21 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
14 21 (1.92%) Pharmacovigilance
15 20 (1.83%) Onboarding
16 14 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
17 12 (1.10%) Low-Code
18 11 (1.01%) Hackathon
Operating Systems
1 9 (0.82%) Linux
2 3 (0.27%) Unix
3 2 (0.18%) Windows
4 1 (0.091%) Android
4 1 (0.091%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.091%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 570 (52.10%) AI
2 545 (49.82%) Machine Learning
3 532 (48.63%) Analytics
4 264 (24.13%) Problem-Solving
5 229 (20.93%) Decision-Making
6 228 (20.84%) Business Intelligence
7 227 (20.75%) Agile
7 227 (20.75%) Data Engineering
8 214 (19.56%) Computer Science
9 202 (18.46%) CI/CD
10 188 (17.18%) Data Pipeline
11 180 (16.45%) Data Modelling
12 164 (14.99%) Use Case
13 158 (14.44%) Visualisation
14 154 (14.08%) ETL
14 154 (14.08%) Generative AI
15 152 (13.89%) Data Analysis
16 151 (13.80%) Mentoring
17 146 (13.35%) Software Engineering
18 140 (12.80%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 615 (56.22%) Python
2 325 (29.71%) SQL
3 94 (8.59%) Scala
4 75 (6.86%) R
5 72 (6.58%) Java
6 62 (5.67%) Go
7 33 (3.02%) JavaScript
8 20 (1.83%) VBA
9 16 (1.46%) C++
10 14 (1.28%) C#
11 13 (1.19%) TypeScript
12 12 (1.10%) Bash
13 8 (0.73%) Rust
13 8 (0.73%) T-SQL
14 7 (0.64%) PHP
15 6 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 6 (0.55%) Julia
16 5 (0.46%) ANSI SQL
16 5 (0.46%) Bicep
17 4 (0.37%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 362 (33.09%) Degree
2 126 (11.52%) Master's Degree
3 112 (10.24%) Security Cleared
4 88 (8.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 61 (5.58%) SC Cleared
6 58 (5.30%) PhD
7 47 (4.30%) DV Cleared
8 32 (2.93%) Numerate Degree
9 30 (2.74%) DBS Check
10 20 (1.83%) MBA
11 17 (1.55%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.19%) APMP
13 8 (0.73%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (0.64%) Postgraduate
15 6 (0.55%) PMI Certification
16 5 (0.46%) BPSS Clearance
16 5 (0.46%) PMP
17 3 (0.27%) AWS Certification
17 3 (0.27%) SAP Certification
18 1 (0.091%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (15.17%) Data Quality
2 71 (6.49%) GDPR
3 56 (5.12%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.74%) QA
5 26 (2.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 24 (2.19%) GxP
7 21 (1.92%) EU AI Act
7 21 (1.92%) HIPAA
7 21 (1.92%) PSD2
7 21 (1.92%) Solvency II
8 10 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.27%) CDISC
9 3 (0.27%) HL7
9 3 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.27%) PERC
10 2 (0.18%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 1 (0.091%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.091%) GMP
11 1 (0.091%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.091%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 113 (10.33%) Docker
2 3 (0.27%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.18%) Firmware
4 1 (0.091%) IAG
Systems Management
1 66 (6.03%) Kubernetes
2 49 (4.48%) Terraform
3 7 (0.64%) Kubeflow
4 4 (0.37%) Ansible
5 3 (0.27%) Argo
6 1 (0.091%) Nagios
6 1 (0.091%) Nessus
6 1 (0.091%) Nmap
Vendors
1 165 (15.08%) Databricks
2 83 (7.59%) Microsoft
3 81 (7.40%) Google
4 49 (4.48%) Dell
5 45 (4.11%) Typelevel
6 35 (3.20%) Informatica
7 27 (2.47%) Alteryx
7 27 (2.47%) Bloomberg
8 24 (2.19%) Denodo
8 24 (2.19%) Teradata
9 23 (2.10%) Cloudera
9 23 (2.10%) OpenAI
10 22 (2.01%) Salesforce
11 20 (1.83%) Cisco
12 19 (1.74%) Oracle
13 14 (1.28%) Palantir
14 11 (1.01%) SAP
15 8 (0.73%) Foundry
16 7 (0.64%) Talend
17 6 (0.55%) ServiceNow