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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 136 106
Rank change year-on-year -26 -30 -42
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,005 1,026 2,120
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.39% 2.24% 2.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.77% 2.40% 3.05%
Number of salaries quoted 515 502 1,304
10th Percentile £43,000 £42,500 £42,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -6.90%
75th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £87,500
90th Percentile £103,250 £112,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £61,418 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year -1.73% +8.70% -10.20%

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 56,699 42,799 69,454
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.53% 93.38% 87.82%
Number of salaries quoted 34,103 21,982 53,104
10th Percentile £29,250 £32,500 £29,288
25th Percentile £38,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,350 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.86% +9.73% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -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 6 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 6 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 -11 931 £70,000 - 968
London +32 498 £80,000 - 483
UK excluding London -64 441 £61,418 -1.73% 710
Work from Home -35 311 £67,110 +4.05% 415
South East -4 161 £60,000 - 262
North of England -68 94 £62,500 -2.25% 136
South West -38 74 £60,000 -14.29% 89
Midlands -19 70 £55,000 +15.79% 96
North West -5 66 £62,500 -3.85% 58
West Midlands -18 35 £65,000 +44.44% 37
East Midlands -20 35 £40,000 -44.83% 58
Yorkshire -73 23 £60,000 -6.25% 52
East of England -12 17 £81,850 +33.09% 88
Scotland -52 12 £95,000 +85.37% 34
Wales -5 11 £39,756 -51.81% 16
North East -19 5 £62,500 +25.00% 27
Northern Ireland -31 3 £40,000 -52.94% 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 79 (7.86%) Apache Spark
2 57 (5.67%) Apache Airflow
3 27 (2.69%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.19%) Apache
4 22 (2.19%) ArcGIS
5 10 (1.00%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.70%) SAS
7 6 (0.60%) Confluence
7 6 (0.60%) IIS
8 3 (0.30%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.30%) CMS
8 3 (0.30%) GeoServer
9 1 (0.100%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.100%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.100%) WordPress
Applications
1 68 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.50%) Chatbot
2 5 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.60%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.100%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.100%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.100%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.100%) Odoo
3 1 (0.100%) SAP PLM
3 1 (0.100%) Sprinklr
3 1 (0.100%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 298 (29.65%) Azure
2 291 (28.96%) AWS
3 174 (17.31%) GCP
4 148 (14.73%) Power Platform
5 72 (7.16%) Snowflake
6 42 (4.18%) Azure Machine Learning
6 42 (4.18%) dbt
7 39 (3.88%) Azure AI
8 34 (3.38%) Amazon SageMaker
9 31 (3.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 31 (3.08%) Vertex AI
10 30 (2.99%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (2.89%) Azure Data Factory
12 27 (2.69%) GitHub
13 24 (2.39%) Microsoft 365
14 23 (2.29%) SaaS
15 20 (1.99%) Dagster
16 19 (1.89%) PowerApps
17 18 (1.79%) Serverless
18 16 (1.59%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 59 (5.87%) Broadband
2 11 (1.09%) 4G
2 11 (1.09%) BGP
2 11 (1.09%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.09%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.09%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.09%) MPLS
3 7 (0.70%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.50%) Firewall
5 4 (0.40%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.40%) HTTP
5 4 (0.40%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.40%) Kerberos
5 4 (0.40%) Modbus
5 4 (0.40%) Network Security
5 4 (0.40%) VLAN
5 4 (0.40%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.40%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.30%) MQTT
7 2 (0.20%) Tactical Data Link
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (13.93%) Power BI
2 125 (12.44%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (10.35%) Tableau
4 89 (8.86%) Data Lake
5 58 (5.77%) BigQuery
6 53 (5.27%) Metadata
7 48 (4.78%) Amazon Redshift
8 43 (4.28%) NoSQL
9 39 (3.88%) Big Data
10 36 (3.58%) Elasticsearch
11 33 (3.28%) MongoDB
12 32 (3.18%) SQL Server
13 31 (3.08%) Looker
14 28 (2.79%) GIS
15 26 (2.59%) Data Mining
15 26 (2.59%) Hadoop
15 26 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
15 26 (2.59%) QGIS
16 24 (2.39%) Delta Lake
17 22 (2.19%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 64 (6.37%) Git
2 42 (4.18%) MLflow
3 14 (1.39%) ERwin
3 14 (1.39%) GitLab
4 8 (0.80%) JIRA
5 7 (0.70%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.50%) Burp Suite
6 5 (0.50%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.40%) ER Studio
7 4 (0.40%) Metasploit
8 3 (0.30%) Selenium
9 1 (0.100%) MSBuild
9 1 (0.100%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.100%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 288 (28.66%) Finance
2 281 (27.96%) Social Skills
3 214 (21.29%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (8.96%) Banking
5 87 (8.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 81 (8.06%) Marketing
7 61 (6.07%) Pharmaceutical
8 56 (5.57%) Retail
9 44 (4.38%) Law
10 43 (4.28%) Financial Institution
11 40 (3.98%) Public Sector
12 25 (2.49%) Manufacturing
13 22 (2.19%) Legal
14 21 (2.09%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (1.39%) Telecoms
16 12 (1.19%) Advertising
16 12 (1.19%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
17 10 (1.00%) Aerospace
17 10 (1.00%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 223 (22.19%) Data Scientist
2 208 (20.70%) Senior
3 150 (14.93%) Data Engineer
4 142 (14.13%) Lead
5 95 (9.45%) Analyst
6 86 (8.56%) Senior Data Scientist
7 73 (7.26%) Consultant
8 72 (7.16%) Data Analyst
9 57 (5.67%) Software Engineer
10 51 (5.07%) Senior Data Engineer
11 47 (4.68%) Developer
12 35 (3.48%) Architect
13 34 (3.38%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
14 25 (2.49%) Data Consultant
15 23 (2.29%) Python Engineer
16 22 (2.19%) Data Architect
17 21 (2.09%) Machine Learning Consultant
17 21 (2.09%) Senior Analyst
18 20 (1.99%) Senior Consultant
18 20 (1.99%) Spatial Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (10.65%) PyTorch
2 81 (8.06%) TensorFlow
3 43 (4.28%) scikit-learn
4 37 (3.68%) LangChain
4 37 (3.68%) PySpark
5 33 (3.28%) Kafka
6 29 (2.89%) gRPC
6 29 (2.89%) React
7 22 (2.19%) Pandas
8 20 (1.99%) HTML
9 18 (1.79%) RESTful
10 15 (1.49%) CSS
10 15 (1.49%) Django
11 14 (1.39%) .NET
12 11 (1.09%) FastAPI
12 11 (1.09%) Hugging Face
12 11 (1.09%) Jinja
12 11 (1.09%) NETCONF
12 11 (1.09%) YANG
13 10 (1.00%) Faiss
Miscellaneous
1 101 (10.05%) Algorithms
2 89 (8.86%) Life Science
3 56 (5.57%) Distributed Systems
4 52 (5.17%) Product Ownership
5 39 (3.88%) Video\Live Streaming
6 37 (3.68%) Management Information System
7 36 (3.58%) Self-Motivation
8 32 (3.18%) Cloud Native
9 31 (3.08%) Data Structures
10 30 (2.99%) Over-the-Top Content
11 25 (2.49%) AI Agents
12 21 (2.09%) Pharmacovigilance
13 18 (1.79%) Social Media
14 16 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
14 16 (1.59%) Onboarding
15 11 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
15 11 (1.09%) Clustering
15 11 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
16 10 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 14 (1.39%) Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Unix
3 4 (0.40%) Android
3 4 (0.40%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.40%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.30%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 530 (52.74%) AI
2 512 (50.95%) Analytics
3 494 (49.15%) Machine Learning
4 236 (23.48%) Problem-Solving
5 221 (21.99%) Agile
5 221 (21.99%) Decision-Making
6 219 (21.79%) Computer Science
7 214 (21.29%) Business Intelligence
8 191 (19.00%) Data Engineering
9 179 (17.81%) CI/CD
9 179 (17.81%) Data Pipeline
10 175 (17.41%) Data Modelling
11 169 (16.82%) Data Analysis
12 151 (15.02%) Visualisation
13 146 (14.53%) Data Governance
14 142 (14.13%) ETL
15 141 (14.03%) Mentoring
16 137 (13.63%) Generative AI
17 136 (13.53%) Statistics
18 135 (13.43%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 571 (56.82%) Python
2 299 (29.75%) SQL
3 73 (7.26%) Scala
4 71 (7.06%) R
5 69 (6.87%) Java
6 41 (4.08%) Go
7 31 (3.08%) JavaScript
8 22 (2.19%) VBA
9 19 (1.89%) C++
10 15 (1.49%) C#
11 12 (1.19%) Bash
12 11 (1.09%) Rust
12 11 (1.09%) TypeScript
13 7 (0.70%) ANSI SQL
13 7 (0.70%) PHP
14 6 (0.60%) Bicep
14 6 (0.60%) C
14 6 (0.60%) T-SQL
15 5 (0.50%) MATLAB
15 5 (0.50%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 369 (36.72%) Degree
2 144 (14.33%) Master's Degree
3 107 (10.65%) Security Cleared
4 87 (8.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (7.66%) PhD
6 71 (7.06%) SC Cleared
7 40 (3.98%) Numerate Degree
8 39 (3.88%) DV Cleared
9 24 (2.39%) MBA
10 21 (2.09%) DBS Check
11 17 (1.69%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.29%) APMP
13 12 (1.19%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.80%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.70%) PMP
17 6 (0.60%) AWS Certification
18 3 (0.30%) SAP Certification
19 1 (0.100%) CCNA
19 1 (0.100%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (16.52%) Data Quality
2 63 (6.27%) GDPR
3 55 (5.47%) Accessibility
4 35 (3.48%) GxP
5 32 (3.18%) QA
6 22 (2.19%) Solvency II
7 21 (2.09%) EU AI Act
7 21 (2.09%) HIPAA
7 21 (2.09%) PSD2
8 11 (1.09%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 9 (0.90%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.70%) CDISC
10 7 (0.70%) HL7
11 4 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 3 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 3 (0.30%) PERC
13 2 (0.20%) ISO 9001
14 1 (0.100%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.100%) GMP
14 1 (0.100%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 97 (9.65%) Docker
2 5 (0.50%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 59 (5.87%) Kubernetes
2 40 (3.98%) Terraform
3 6 (0.60%) Ansible
4 4 (0.40%) Nessus
4 4 (0.40%) Nmap
5 3 (0.30%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.20%) Argo
7 1 (0.100%) Nagios
Vendors
1 130 (12.94%) Databricks
2 84 (8.36%) Microsoft
3 77 (7.66%) Google
4 31 (3.08%) Alteryx
4 31 (3.08%) Bloomberg
5 28 (2.79%) Salesforce
6 27 (2.69%) Typelevel
7 25 (2.49%) Informatica
7 25 (2.49%) OpenAI
8 24 (2.39%) Dell
9 23 (2.29%) Cisco
9 23 (2.29%) Oracle
10 14 (1.39%) Palantir
11 12 (1.19%) Denodo
11 12 (1.19%) SAP
11 12 (1.19%) Teradata
12 9 (0.90%) Foundry
12 9 (0.90%) Talend
13 8 (0.80%) Cloudera
14 7 (0.70%) ServiceNow