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 23 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 130 112
Rank change year-on-year -29 -18 -45
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,044 1,007 2,225
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.36% 2.37% 2.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.75% 2.54% 2.93%
Number of salaries quoted 535 515 1,294
10th Percentile £44,500 £44,590 £42,075
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -3.57%
75th Percentile £90,000 £91,625 £88,438
90th Percentile £102,500 £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 59,502 39,701 75,893
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.59% 93.45% 86.91%
Number of salaries quoted 36,057 22,405 57,038
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,452 £29,031
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% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 -22 969 £70,000 - 726
London +26 516 £80,000 - 382
UK excluding London -77 456 £62,500 - 475
Work from Home -29 320 £69,479 +6.89% 258
South East -14 157 £65,000 +8.33% 170
North of England -62 94 £62,500 -1.81% 109
South West -40 77 £60,000 -14.29% 61
Midlands -48 74 £55,000 -2.22% 67
North West -4 65 £65,000 +0.87% 54
West Midlands -15 39 £62,500 +38.89% 28
East Midlands -31 35 £45,000 -37.93% 39
East of England -5 30 £86,725 +49.53% 33
Yorkshire -72 24 £60,000 -5.74% 37
Scotland -53 13 £90,000 +63.64% 21
Wales -15 8 £39,756 -51.81% 15
North East -27 5 £62,500 - 20
Northern Ireland -38 3 - - 7

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 86 (8.24%) Apache Spark
2 74 (7.09%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.11%) ArcGIS
3 22 (2.11%) SharePoint
4 19 (1.82%) Apache
5 10 (0.96%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.67%) SAS
7 5 (0.48%) Confluence
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
8 4 (0.38%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.29%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
10 1 (0.096%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.096%) WordPress
Applications
1 59 (5.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.38%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.57%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.096%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.096%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.096%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.096%) Odoo
3 1 (0.096%) SAP PLM
3 1 (0.096%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 320 (30.65%) AWS
2 313 (29.98%) Azure
3 195 (18.68%) GCP
4 159 (15.23%) Power Platform
5 98 (9.39%) Snowflake
6 58 (5.56%) dbt
7 46 (4.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 45 (4.31%) Azure Machine Learning
9 38 (3.64%) Azure AI
10 36 (3.45%) Amazon SageMaker
11 32 (3.07%) Vertex AI
12 31 (2.97%) Azure Data Factory
13 28 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
14 25 (2.39%) GitHub
15 24 (2.30%) SaaS
16 20 (1.92%) Microsoft 365
17 19 (1.82%) Dagster
18 18 (1.72%) Serverless
19 17 (1.63%) Amazon S3
20 16 (1.53%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 72 (6.90%) Broadband
2 11 (1.05%) 4G
2 11 (1.05%) BGP
2 11 (1.05%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.05%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.05%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.05%) MPLS
3 4 (0.38%) Kerberos
4 3 (0.29%) HTTP
4 3 (0.29%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.19%) Internet
5 2 (0.19%) MQTT
5 2 (0.19%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.096%) Firewall
6 1 (0.096%) LTE
6 1 (0.096%) Modbus
6 1 (0.096%) Network Security
6 1 (0.096%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.096%) TCAP
6 1 (0.096%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 151 (14.46%) Data Warehouse
1 151 (14.46%) Power BI
2 119 (11.40%) Tableau
3 107 (10.25%) Data Lake
4 74 (7.09%) BigQuery
5 56 (5.36%) Amazon Redshift
5 56 (5.36%) Elasticsearch
6 50 (4.79%) Metadata
7 48 (4.60%) NoSQL
8 47 (4.50%) Looker
9 36 (3.45%) Big Data
10 34 (3.26%) MongoDB
11 32 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
12 31 (2.97%) GIS
12 31 (2.97%) SQL Server
13 27 (2.59%) Data Mining
13 27 (2.59%) QGIS
14 26 (2.49%) Snowflake Schema
15 25 (2.39%) Hadoop
16 23 (2.20%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 67 (6.42%) Git
2 58 (5.56%) MLflow
3 15 (1.44%) GitLab
4 8 (0.77%) JIRA
5 7 (0.67%) ERwin
5 7 (0.67%) PowerDesigner
6 6 (0.57%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.38%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.29%) Selenium
9 2 (0.19%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.096%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.096%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.096%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.096%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 271 (25.96%) Finance
2 263 (25.19%) Social Skills
3 233 (22.32%) Analytical Skills
4 94 (9.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 88 (8.43%) Banking
6 82 (7.85%) Marketing
7 59 (5.65%) Retail
8 53 (5.08%) Pharmaceutical
9 46 (4.41%) Public Sector
10 41 (3.93%) Law
11 39 (3.74%) Financial Institution
12 24 (2.30%) Legal
13 21 (2.01%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
15 16 (1.53%) Advertising
16 14 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (1.34%) Telecoms
17 11 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
18 10 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 6 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 240 (22.99%) Data Scientist
2 226 (21.65%) Senior
3 153 (14.66%) Data Engineer
4 140 (13.41%) Lead
5 99 (9.48%) Senior Data Scientist
6 83 (7.95%) Analyst
7 74 (7.09%) Consultant
8 67 (6.42%) Data Analyst
9 61 (5.84%) Software Engineer
10 53 (5.08%) Developer
11 50 (4.79%) Senior Data Engineer
12 33 (3.16%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
13 30 (2.87%) Systems Engineer
14 29 (2.78%) Architect
15 27 (2.59%) Data Consultant
15 27 (2.59%) Python Engineer
16 25 (2.39%) Lead Data Scientist
17 24 (2.30%) Data Management Specialist
17 24 (2.30%) Product Specialist
17 24 (2.30%) Scala Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 127 (12.16%) PyTorch
2 96 (9.20%) TensorFlow
3 60 (5.75%) scikit-learn
4 50 (4.79%) LangChain
5 47 (4.50%) Kafka
6 38 (3.64%) gRPC
7 32 (3.07%) PySpark
8 31 (2.97%) React
9 24 (2.30%) LlamaIndex
10 23 (2.20%) pgvector
11 21 (2.01%) Pandas
12 20 (1.92%) HTML
12 20 (1.92%) RESTful
13 18 (1.72%) Django
14 15 (1.44%) CSS
15 13 (1.25%) .NET
15 13 (1.25%) Node.js
16 12 (1.15%) FastAPI
16 12 (1.15%) XGBoost
17 11 (1.05%) NETCONF
Miscellaneous
1 95 (9.10%) Algorithms
2 83 (7.95%) Life Science
3 62 (5.94%) Distributed Systems
4 49 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 49 (4.69%) Video\Live Streaming
5 45 (4.31%) Cloud Native
6 40 (3.83%) Over-the-Top Content
7 38 (3.64%) Management Information System
8 32 (3.07%) Self-Motivation
9 27 (2.59%) Data Structures
10 26 (2.49%) Clustering
11 25 (2.39%) Public Cloud
12 23 (2.20%) AI Agents
13 21 (2.01%) Pharmacovigilance
14 20 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.92%) Social Media
15 19 (1.82%) Onboarding
16 11 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
16 11 (1.05%) Hackathon
16 11 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.05%) Linux
2 5 (0.48%) Unix
3 2 (0.19%) Windows
4 1 (0.096%) Android
4 1 (0.096%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.096%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 562 (53.83%) AI
2 523 (50.10%) Machine Learning
3 521 (49.90%) Analytics
4 247 (23.66%) Problem-Solving
5 234 (22.41%) Business Intelligence
6 223 (21.36%) Data Engineering
7 219 (20.98%) Decision-Making
8 218 (20.88%) Agile
9 209 (20.02%) Computer Science
10 190 (18.20%) CI/CD
11 185 (17.72%) Data Modelling
11 185 (17.72%) Data Pipeline
12 162 (15.52%) Use Case
13 159 (15.23%) ETL
14 154 (14.75%) Data Analysis
15 150 (14.37%) Generative AI
16 149 (14.27%) Visualisation
17 146 (13.98%) Mentoring
18 142 (13.60%) Data Governance
19 137 (13.12%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 590 (56.51%) Python
2 308 (29.50%) SQL
3 84 (8.05%) Scala
4 70 (6.70%) Java
4 70 (6.70%) R
5 51 (4.89%) Go
6 32 (3.07%) JavaScript
7 19 (1.82%) VBA
8 16 (1.53%) C++
9 15 (1.44%) C#
10 12 (1.15%) Bash
10 12 (1.15%) TypeScript
11 8 (0.77%) Rust
11 8 (0.77%) T-SQL
12 7 (0.67%) ANSI SQL
13 6 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 6 (0.57%) PHP
14 5 (0.48%) Bicep
15 4 (0.38%) Julia
15 4 (0.38%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 360 (34.48%) Degree
2 130 (12.45%) Master's Degree
3 103 (9.87%) Security Cleared
4 87 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (6.13%) PhD
6 58 (5.56%) SC Cleared
7 43 (4.12%) DV Cleared
8 36 (3.45%) Numerate Degree
9 23 (2.20%) DBS Check
10 20 (1.92%) MBA
11 17 (1.63%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.25%) APMP
13 8 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.77%) PMI Certification
14 7 (0.67%) PMP
15 5 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
16 3 (0.29%) AWS Certification
16 3 (0.29%) SAP Certification
17 2 (0.19%) Postgraduate
18 1 (0.096%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (16.19%) Data Quality
2 71 (6.80%) GDPR
3 57 (5.46%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.87%) QA
5 26 (2.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 25 (2.39%) GxP
7 22 (2.11%) Solvency II
8 21 (2.01%) EU AI Act
8 21 (2.01%) HIPAA
8 21 (2.01%) PSD2
9 9 (0.86%) Actionable Recommendations
10 4 (0.38%) CDISC
10 4 (0.38%) HL7
11 3 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.29%) PERC
12 2 (0.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 2 (0.19%) ISO 9001
13 1 (0.096%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.096%) FINRA
13 1 (0.096%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 104 (9.96%) Docker
2 5 (0.48%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.19%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 62 (5.94%) Kubernetes
2 46 (4.41%) Terraform
3 6 (0.57%) Ansible
3 6 (0.57%) Kubeflow
4 2 (0.19%) Argo
5 1 (0.096%) Nagios
5 1 (0.096%) Nessus
5 1 (0.096%) Nmap
Vendors
1 160 (15.33%) Databricks
2 88 (8.43%) Microsoft
3 71 (6.80%) Google
4 51 (4.89%) Dell
5 36 (3.45%) Informatica
5 36 (3.45%) Typelevel
6 30 (2.87%) Alteryx
6 30 (2.87%) Bloomberg
7 25 (2.39%) Salesforce
8 24 (2.30%) Denodo
8 24 (2.30%) Teradata
9 23 (2.20%) Cloudera
9 23 (2.20%) Oracle
10 21 (2.01%) OpenAI
11 20 (1.92%) Cisco
12 14 (1.34%) Palantir
13 12 (1.15%) SAP
14 8 (0.77%) Foundry
14 8 (0.77%) Talend
15 7 (0.67%) ServiceNow