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 28 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 152 154
Rank change year-on-year +21 +2 -24
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,566 1,083 1,402
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.43% 2.17% 1.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.96% 2.44% 2.08%
Number of salaries quoted 915 501 703
10th Percentile £44,500 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £72,500 £68,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.84% -3.35%
75th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £91,250
90th Percentile £105,000 £120,000 £114,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £58,500 £60,250
% change year-on-year +19.66% -2.90% -3.60%

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 79,979 44,380 67,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.78% 80.65%
Number of salaries quoted 55,459 25,207 42,110
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,055
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.10% -8.99%

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 28 August 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 28 August 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 +14 1,457 £75,000 +3.45% 2,891
UK excluding London +15 769 £70,000 +19.66% 1,125
London +7 723 £80,000 -5.88% 2,052
Work from Home +56 486 £75,000 +15.38% 1,005
North of England +92 257 £75,000 +36.08% 266
North West +76 162 £75,000 +36.36% 163
South East -91 145 £70,000 +27.27% 285
Midlands +32 128 £60,000 -6.98% 127
South West -12 123 £61,250 -12.50% 164
East Midlands +24 80 £70,000 +43.59% 62
Yorkshire +3 65 £70,000 +21.74% 80
East of England -14 48 £75,000 +25.00% 129
West Midlands -15 48 £35,500 -45.38% 65
Scotland +3 31 £75,026 -10.40% 102
North East -29 30 £80,000 +68.42% 26
Wales -46 29 £75,000 +76.21% 44
Northern Ireland -75 8 £55,000 - 29

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
1 123 (7.85%) Apache Spark
2 53 (3.38%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.75%) Apache
4 13 (0.83%) SAS
5 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
6 7 (0.45%) Confluence
6 7 (0.45%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.32%) ColdFusion
8 4 (0.26%) GeoServer
9 2 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.13%) Luigi
9 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.13%) Tornado
10 1 (0.064%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.064%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.064%) R Markdown
Applications
1 52 (3.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.83%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.19%) SPSS
6 2 (0.13%) Final Cut Pro
7 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.064%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (0.13%) Infor M3
2 1 (0.064%) HFM
2 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 388 (24.78%) AWS
2 347 (22.16%) Azure
3 214 (13.67%) GCP
4 164 (10.47%) Power Platform
5 120 (7.66%) Snowflake
6 72 (4.60%) Azure Data Factory
7 64 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 56 (3.58%) Serverless
9 52 (3.32%) dbt
10 44 (2.81%) SaaS
11 40 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
12 37 (2.36%) Amazon Bedrock
12 37 (2.36%) Anthropic Claude
13 36 (2.30%) Azure Machine Learning
14 35 (2.23%) Amazon S3
15 31 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
16 27 (1.72%) GitHub
17 23 (1.47%) Microsoft Purview
18 19 (1.21%) Google Analytics
19 16 (1.02%) Google Gemini
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.81%) Broadband
2 6 (0.38%) 5G
2 6 (0.38%) BGP
2 6 (0.38%) DNS
2 6 (0.38%) Internet
2 6 (0.38%) IPsec
2 6 (0.38%) VPN
3 4 (0.26%) Software-Defined Radio
4 2 (0.13%) Firewall
5 1 (0.064%) HTTP
5 1 (0.064%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 157 (10.03%) Power BI
2 142 (9.07%) Data Warehouse
3 114 (7.28%) Data Lake
4 110 (7.02%) Tableau
5 75 (4.79%) Amazon Redshift
6 60 (3.83%) Big Data
7 59 (3.77%) NoSQL
8 58 (3.70%) Metadata
9 51 (3.26%) Looker
10 49 (3.13%) BigQuery
11 40 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
11 40 (2.55%) Relational Database
12 35 (2.23%) Elasticsearch
12 35 (2.23%) SQL Server
13 32 (2.04%) Azure SQL Database
13 32 (2.04%) MongoDB
14 31 (1.98%) Delta Lake
15 27 (1.72%) Hadoop
16 26 (1.66%) Data Mining
17 24 (1.53%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 93 (5.94%) Git
2 46 (2.94%) MLflow
3 28 (1.79%) Claude Code
4 14 (0.89%) JIRA
5 11 (0.70%) Jenkins
6 10 (0.64%) GitLab
7 5 (0.32%) Visual Studio Code
8 2 (0.13%) JUnit
9 1 (0.064%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.064%) NUnit
9 1 (0.064%) Selenium
9 1 (0.064%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.064%) Yeoman
General
1 422 (26.95%) Finance
2 324 (20.69%) Social Skills
3 306 (19.54%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (8.94%) Marketing
5 132 (8.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 130 (8.30%) Banking
7 89 (5.68%) Retail
8 85 (5.43%) Public Sector
9 83 (5.30%) Law
10 40 (2.55%) Legal
11 34 (2.17%) Advertising
12 33 (2.11%) Financial Institution
13 32 (2.04%) Organisational Skills
14 31 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
15 25 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
16 22 (1.40%) Games
17 20 (1.28%) Back Office
18 16 (1.02%) Manufacturing
19 15 (0.96%) Publishing
20 12 (0.77%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 585 (37.36%) Data Scientist
2 387 (24.71%) Senior
3 314 (20.05%) Senior Data Scientist
4 226 (14.43%) Lead
5 184 (11.75%) Data Engineer
6 101 (6.45%) Software Engineer
7 100 (6.39%) Lead Data Scientist
8 76 (4.85%) Architect
9 75 (4.79%) Developer
10 71 (4.53%) Analyst
11 57 (3.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 49 (3.13%) Consultant
13 37 (2.36%) Data Analyst
14 36 (2.30%) Data Architect
14 36 (2.30%) Senior Data Engineer
15 35 (2.23%) Research Scientist
16 33 (2.11%) Machine Learning Scientist
17 29 (1.85%) Principal Data Scientist
18 28 (1.79%) Python Engineer
19 27 (1.72%) Data Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 139 (8.88%) PyTorch
2 122 (7.79%) TensorFlow
3 96 (6.13%) scikit-learn
4 86 (5.49%) LangChain
5 81 (5.17%) Kafka
6 68 (4.34%) Terraform
7 63 (4.02%) PySpark
8 52 (3.32%) Pandas
9 47 (3.00%) LangGraph
10 36 (2.30%) LlamaIndex
11 35 (2.23%) React
12 34 (2.17%) Hugging Face
13 33 (2.11%) NumPy
14 28 (1.79%) pgvector
15 26 (1.66%) REST
16 22 (1.40%) .NET
17 21 (1.34%) SpaCy
17 21 (1.34%) Spring
18 20 (1.28%) FastAPI
18 20 (1.28%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 116 (7.41%) Cloud Native
2 102 (6.51%) Algorithms
3 92 (5.87%) AI Agents
4 52 (3.32%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 51 (3.26%) Product Ownership
6 35 (2.23%) Clustering
7 32 (2.04%) Video\Live Streaming
8 31 (1.98%) Hedge funds
8 31 (1.98%) Public Cloud
9 29 (1.85%) Data Structures
10 25 (1.60%) Over-the-Top Content
11 24 (1.53%) Blog
11 24 (1.53%) Management Information System
12 21 (1.34%) Social Media
13 20 (1.28%) e-Learning
14 18 (1.15%) Life Science
15 17 (1.09%) Credit Risk
16 16 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
17 13 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (1.47%) Linux
2 10 (0.64%) Windows
3 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
4 2 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
4 2 (0.13%) Mac OS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.064%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.064%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 813 (51.92%) AI
2 755 (48.21%) Machine Learning
3 632 (40.36%) Analytics
4 290 (18.52%) Decision-Making
5 285 (18.20%) CI/CD
6 278 (17.75%) Data Engineering
7 275 (17.56%) Software Engineering
8 258 (16.48%) Agile
8 258 (16.48%) Problem-Solving
9 254 (16.22%) Data Pipeline
10 244 (15.58%) Business Intelligence
11 242 (15.45%) Roadmaps
12 228 (14.56%) Generative AI
13 224 (14.30%) Mentoring
14 194 (12.39%) MLOps
15 191 (12.20%) Data Modelling
16 182 (11.62%) Actionable Insight
17 162 (10.34%) Use Case
18 159 (10.15%) Visualisation
19 157 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 692 (44.19%) Python
2 467 (29.82%) SQL
3 95 (6.07%) Java
4 58 (3.70%) Scala
5 54 (3.45%) C++
6 48 (3.07%) JavaScript
7 42 (2.68%) R
8 39 (2.49%) C#
9 30 (1.92%) Go
10 21 (1.34%) Bicep
11 20 (1.28%) C
12 19 (1.21%) TypeScript
13 14 (0.89%) VBA
14 10 (0.64%) Julia
14 10 (0.64%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.64%) PHP
15 8 (0.51%) Groovy
16 6 (0.38%) Bash
16 6 (0.38%) Ruby
17 5 (0.32%) Rust
Qualifications
1 334 (21.33%) Degree
2 165 (10.54%) Security Cleared
3 90 (5.75%) DV Cleared
4 83 (5.30%) Master's Degree
5 67 (4.28%) SC Cleared
6 62 (3.96%) PhD
7 49 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (2.23%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.98%) DBS Check
10 19 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
11 18 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
12 15 (0.96%) AWS Certification
12 15 (0.96%) SnowPro
13 9 (0.57%) Numerate Degree
14 8 (0.51%) Postgraduate
15 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 5 (0.32%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.32%) PMP
16 3 (0.19%) CISSP
16 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 187 (11.94%) Data Quality
2 51 (3.26%) GDPR
3 37 (2.36%) QA
4 27 (1.72%) Accessibility
5 23 (1.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 12 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
7 11 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.38%) EU AI Act
9 3 (0.19%) SOC 2
10 2 (0.13%) DICOM
10 2 (0.13%) HL7
10 2 (0.13%) IFRS
10 2 (0.13%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.13%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.13%) WCAG
11 1 (0.064%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.064%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 1 (0.064%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 88 (5.62%) Docker
2 3 (0.19%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.19%) Firmware
3 2 (0.13%) IAG
4 1 (0.064%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.064%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.064%) VMware ESXi
4 1 (0.064%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.064%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 69 (4.41%) Kubernetes
2 15 (0.96%) Kubeflow
3 6 (0.38%) Hadoop YARN
4 5 (0.32%) Ansible
5 4 (0.26%) Argo
6 3 (0.19%) Kibana
7 2 (0.13%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.13%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 2 (0.13%) Grafana
7 2 (0.13%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.064%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.064%) Puppet
Vendors
1 238 (15.20%) Databricks
2 129 (8.24%) Microsoft
3 91 (5.81%) Google
4 43 (2.75%) Dell
5 26 (1.66%) OpenAI
6 23 (1.47%) Cloudera
7 22 (1.40%) Informatica
7 22 (1.40%) Teradata
8 20 (1.28%) Denodo
9 19 (1.21%) Oracle
10 18 (1.15%) Typelevel
11 11 (0.70%) SAP
11 11 (0.70%) Workday
12 10 (0.64%) LexisNexis
13 7 (0.45%) IBM
14 6 (0.38%) Foundry
14 6 (0.38%) HP
14 6 (0.38%) Salesforce
15 5 (0.32%) Alteryx
16 4 (0.26%) CA Agile Central