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 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 134 100
Rank change year-on-year -25 -34 -33
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 918 1,163 2,011
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.44% 2.24% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.80% 2.44% 3.24%
Number of salaries quoted 486 514 1,301
10th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £42,439
25th Percentile £53,750 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -3.57%
75th Percentile £90,000 £88,750 £87,500
90th Percentile £110,000 £114,250 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £63,652 £57,500
% change year-on-year -5.74% +10.70% -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 51,135 47,583 62,099
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.17% 91.57% 88.82%
Number of salaries quoted 30,200 22,958 48,143
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,531 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,772
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £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 31 January 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 31 January 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 -21 869 £70,000 - 833
London +19 472 £80,939 +7.92% 417
UK excluding London -55 398 £60,000 -5.74% 649
Work from Home -35 288 £67,000 +3.08% 379
South East -9 157 £57,500 -8.00% 253
North of England -55 92 £61,418 -3.85% 131
North West +6 63 £62,500 -2.15% 71
South West -3 62 £60,000 -14.29% 78
Midlands -22 50 £57,500 - 69
East Midlands -1 28 £40,000 -51.52% 50
Yorkshire -44 25 £57,500 -10.16% 41
West Midlands -15 22 £65,250 +45.00% 19
East of England +14 17 £80,000 +37.93% 76
Wales +7 10 £40,000 -50.00% 16
Scotland -60 10 £100,000 +100.00% 37
North East -15 4 £62,500 - 20
Northern Ireland -18 1 £40,000 -52.94% 4

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 73 (7.95%) Apache Spark
2 35 (3.81%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.83%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.96%) Apache
5 13 (1.42%) Jupyter
6 6 (0.65%) IIS
6 6 (0.65%) SAS
7 5 (0.54%) Confluence
8 3 (0.33%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.22%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.22%) CMS
9 2 (0.22%) Luigi
10 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 71 (7.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.76%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) Stata
Business Applications
1 6 (0.65%) Salesforce CRM
1 6 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.44%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.11%) Odoo
4 1 (0.11%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.11%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 273 (29.74%) Azure
2 240 (26.14%) AWS
3 145 (15.80%) GCP
4 140 (15.25%) Power Platform
5 46 (5.01%) Snowflake
6 39 (4.25%) Azure AI
6 39 (4.25%) Azure Machine Learning
7 33 (3.59%) Amazon SageMaker
8 31 (3.38%) Azure Data Factory
8 31 (3.38%) Vertex AI
9 29 (3.16%) SaaS
10 26 (2.83%) Azure DevOps
10 26 (2.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 24 (2.61%) GitHub
12 22 (2.40%) dbt
13 21 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
13 21 (2.29%) Serverless
14 18 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (1.74%) PowerApps
16 15 (1.63%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 31 (3.38%) Broadband
2 11 (1.20%) 4G
2 11 (1.20%) BGP
2 11 (1.20%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.20%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.20%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.20%) MPLS
3 7 (0.76%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.54%) Firewall
5 4 (0.44%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.44%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.44%) Modbus
5 4 (0.44%) Network Security
5 4 (0.44%) VLAN
5 4 (0.44%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.44%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.33%) HTTP
6 3 (0.33%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.33%) MQTT
7 2 (0.22%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (14.49%) Power BI
2 112 (12.20%) Data Warehouse
3 103 (11.22%) Tableau
4 79 (8.61%) Data Lake
5 45 (4.90%) Big Data
6 44 (4.79%) Metadata
6 44 (4.79%) NoSQL
7 36 (3.92%) SQL Server
8 35 (3.81%) Amazon Redshift
8 35 (3.81%) BigQuery
9 30 (3.27%) Hadoop
10 28 (3.05%) Data Mining
11 26 (2.83%) MongoDB
12 24 (2.61%) Elasticsearch
13 22 (2.40%) Delta Lake
13 22 (2.40%) MySQL
13 22 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
14 20 (2.18%) DynamoDB
14 20 (2.18%) Relational Database
15 16 (1.74%) Looker
Development Applications
1 61 (6.64%) Git
2 34 (3.70%) MLflow
3 16 (1.74%) ERwin
4 14 (1.53%) GitLab
5 8 (0.87%) JIRA
6 7 (0.76%) PowerDesigner
7 5 (0.54%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.44%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.44%) Metasploit
9 3 (0.33%) Selenium
10 1 (0.11%) Jenkins
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MSBuild
10 1 (0.11%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.11%) TestNG
10 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 329 (35.84%) Finance
2 280 (30.50%) Social Skills
3 203 (22.11%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (10.02%) Banking
5 87 (9.48%) Marketing
6 82 (8.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 68 (7.41%) Pharmaceutical
8 60 (6.54%) Retail
9 48 (5.23%) Financial Institution
10 42 (4.58%) Law
11 33 (3.59%) Manufacturing
12 24 (2.61%) Legal
12 24 (2.61%) Public Sector
13 22 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (1.63%) Telecoms
15 13 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
16 12 (1.31%) Games
17 11 (1.20%) Advertising
17 11 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
18 9 (0.98%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 196 (21.35%) Senior
2 185 (20.15%) Data Scientist
3 146 (15.90%) Lead
4 138 (15.03%) Data Engineer
5 87 (9.48%) Analyst
6 73 (7.95%) Senior Data Scientist
7 68 (7.41%) Data Analyst
8 58 (6.32%) Developer
9 48 (5.23%) Software Engineer
10 44 (4.79%) Consultant
11 42 (4.58%) Senior Data Engineer
12 31 (3.38%) Architect
13 23 (2.51%) Data Architect
14 19 (2.07%) Data Consultant
14 19 (2.07%) Senior Analyst
15 18 (1.96%) Python Engineer
15 18 (1.96%) Senior Consultant
16 17 (1.85%) Data Science Engineer
16 17 (1.85%) Senior Developer
16 17 (1.85%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (8.82%) PyTorch
2 69 (7.52%) TensorFlow
3 45 (4.90%) PySpark
4 44 (4.79%) scikit-learn
5 36 (3.92%) Pandas
5 36 (3.92%) React
6 32 (3.49%) LangChain
7 21 (2.29%) RESTful
8 19 (2.07%) Kafka
8 19 (2.07%) NumPy
9 17 (1.85%) HTML
10 15 (1.63%) FastAPI
11 14 (1.53%) Hugging Face
12 13 (1.42%) CSS
13 12 (1.31%) Django
13 12 (1.31%) gRPC
13 12 (1.31%) REST
14 11 (1.20%) Jinja
14 11 (1.20%) NETCONF
14 11 (1.20%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 95 (10.35%) Life Science
2 87 (9.48%) Algorithms
3 53 (5.77%) Product Ownership
4 45 (4.90%) Distributed Systems
5 44 (4.79%) Self-Motivation
6 35 (3.81%) Management Information System
7 28 (3.05%) Cloud Native
8 24 (2.61%) Data Structures
9 22 (2.40%) Onboarding
10 21 (2.29%) Pharmacovigilance
11 17 (1.85%) Video\Live Streaming
12 16 (1.74%) AI Agents
13 14 (1.53%) Reinsurance
14 13 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (1.42%) Omics
15 12 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
15 12 (1.31%) Over-the-Top Content
15 12 (1.31%) Social Media
16 11 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
16 11 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.09%) Linux
2 6 (0.65%) Unix
3 4 (0.44%) Android
3 4 (0.44%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.44%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 477 (51.96%) AI
2 469 (51.09%) Analytics
3 468 (50.98%) Machine Learning
4 239 (26.03%) Problem-Solving
5 225 (24.51%) Computer Science
6 221 (24.07%) Agile
7 203 (22.11%) Decision-Making
8 194 (21.13%) Business Intelligence
9 175 (19.06%) Data Engineering
10 164 (17.86%) Data Modelling
11 163 (17.76%) CI/CD
12 162 (17.65%) Data Pipeline
13 152 (16.56%) Data Analysis
14 150 (16.34%) Data Governance
15 145 (15.80%) Visualisation
16 143 (15.58%) Statistics
17 142 (15.47%) ETL
18 132 (14.38%) Roadmaps
19 131 (14.27%) Mathematics
19 131 (14.27%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 520 (56.64%) Python
2 301 (32.79%) SQL
3 70 (7.63%) R
4 59 (6.43%) Java
5 55 (5.99%) Scala
6 23 (2.51%) JavaScript
7 22 (2.40%) Go
8 18 (1.96%) VBA
9 17 (1.85%) C#
9 17 (1.85%) TypeScript
10 15 (1.63%) C++
11 11 (1.20%) MATLAB
11 11 (1.20%) Rust
12 8 (0.87%) ANSI SQL
12 8 (0.87%) Bash
12 8 (0.87%) Bicep
12 8 (0.87%) PHP
13 6 (0.65%) C
14 5 (0.54%) PowerShell
15 4 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 361 (39.32%) Degree
2 162 (17.65%) Master's Degree
3 95 (10.35%) PhD
4 94 (10.24%) Security Cleared
5 87 (9.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 71 (7.73%) SC Cleared
7 40 (4.36%) Numerate Degree
8 27 (2.94%) DV Cleared
9 21 (2.29%) MBA
10 16 (1.74%) DBS Check
11 11 (1.20%) Azure Certification
12 10 (1.09%) APMP
12 10 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
13 9 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.87%) PMI Certification
15 7 (0.76%) PMP
16 6 (0.65%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.33%) CFA
17 3 (0.33%) SAP Certification
18 2 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (16.56%) Data Quality
2 53 (5.77%) GDPR
3 43 (4.68%) GxP
4 36 (3.92%) Accessibility
5 22 (2.40%) EU AI Act
5 22 (2.40%) QA
5 22 (2.40%) Solvency II
6 21 (2.29%) HIPAA
6 21 (2.29%) PSD2
7 10 (1.09%) CDISC
7 10 (1.09%) HL7
8 7 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.33%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 3 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.33%) NIST
10 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
11 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.11%) FINRA
System Software
1 75 (8.17%) Docker
2 3 (0.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 50 (5.45%) Kubernetes
2 27 (2.94%) Terraform
3 7 (0.76%) Ansible
4 5 (0.54%) Kubeflow
5 4 (0.44%) Nessus
5 4 (0.44%) Nmap
6 2 (0.22%) Argo
6 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.22%) Puppet
7 1 (0.11%) Nagios
Vendors
1 119 (12.96%) Databricks
2 84 (9.15%) Microsoft
3 67 (7.30%) Google
4 31 (3.38%) Alteryx
4 31 (3.38%) Bloomberg
5 28 (3.05%) Salesforce
6 27 (2.94%) Oracle
7 26 (2.83%) OpenAI
8 22 (2.40%) Cisco
9 17 (1.85%) SAP
10 16 (1.74%) Informatica
11 13 (1.42%) Palantir
12 12 (1.31%) Talend
13 9 (0.98%) Foundry
13 9 (0.98%) Typelevel
14 5 (0.54%) BT
14 5 (0.54%) Red Hat
15 4 (0.44%) Fortinet
15 4 (0.44%) IBM
15 4 (0.44%) Splunk