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 9 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 135 107
Rank change year-on-year -32 -28 -41
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 913 1,129 2,029
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.40% 2.24% 2.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.75% 2.44% 3.09%
Number of salaries quoted 482 516 1,315
10th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £42,439
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £48,791
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% +3.70% -4.93%
75th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £87,500
90th Percentile £109,750 £112,500 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year -4.00% +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 52,190 46,328 65,674
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.79% 92.00% 88.33%
Number of salaries quoted 30,933 22,336 50,972
10th Percentile £28,750 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £80,100 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,375 £101,250 £95,000
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 9 February 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 9 February 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 -24 864 £71,000 +1.43% 804
London +18 465 £80,939 +1.17% 398
UK excluding London -63 400 £60,000 -4.00% 637
Work from Home -35 279 £67,500 +3.85% 366
South East -15 159 £57,500 -8.00% 252
North of England -49 93 £61,418 -3.94% 127
North West +8 64 £62,500 -3.47% 66
South West -14 60 £62,500 -9.09% 77
Midlands -21 52 £60,000 +9.09% 82
East Midlands -8 31 £42,500 -45.16% 54
Yorkshire -60 25 £57,500 -10.16% 41
West Midlands -16 21 £65,500 +45.56% 28
East of England +10 15 £90,000 +55.17% 61
Wales +8 11 £39,756 -50.31% 12
Scotland -68 10 £100,000 +100.00% 37
North East -15 4 £62,500 - 21
Northern Ireland -20 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 74 (8.11%) Apache Spark
2 36 (3.94%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.85%) SharePoint
4 19 (2.08%) Apache
5 13 (1.42%) Jupyter
6 6 (0.66%) IIS
6 6 (0.66%) SAS
7 5 (0.55%) Confluence
8 3 (0.33%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.33%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.22%) CMS
9 2 (0.22%) Luigi
10 1 (0.11%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 71 (7.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.77%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) Stata
6 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Salesforce CRM
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.33%) 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
1 268 (29.35%) Azure
2 235 (25.74%) AWS
3 141 (15.44%) GCP
4 139 (15.22%) Power Platform
5 46 (5.04%) Snowflake
6 41 (4.49%) Azure Machine Learning
7 39 (4.27%) Azure AI
8 34 (3.72%) Amazon SageMaker
9 32 (3.50%) Vertex AI
10 31 (3.40%) Azure Data Factory
11 28 (3.07%) SaaS
12 27 (2.96%) Azure DevOps
13 24 (2.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 24 (2.63%) GitHub
14 23 (2.52%) dbt
15 22 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
16 21 (2.30%) Serverless
17 17 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
17 17 (1.86%) PowerApps
18 16 (1.75%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 32 (3.50%) 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 (0.77%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.55%) Firewall
5 4 (0.44%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.44%) HTTP
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%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.33%) MQTT
7 2 (0.22%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (14.46%) Power BI
2 112 (12.27%) Data Warehouse
3 105 (11.50%) Tableau
4 76 (8.32%) Data Lake
5 45 (4.93%) Metadata
6 44 (4.82%) Big Data
7 43 (4.71%) NoSQL
8 39 (4.27%) BigQuery
9 37 (4.05%) Amazon Redshift
10 36 (3.94%) SQL Server
11 31 (3.40%) Hadoop
12 28 (3.07%) Data Mining
13 25 (2.74%) MongoDB
14 24 (2.63%) Elasticsearch
15 23 (2.52%) Delta Lake
16 22 (2.41%) MySQL
16 22 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
17 19 (2.08%) DynamoDB
17 19 (2.08%) Looker
17 19 (2.08%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 58 (6.35%) Git
2 34 (3.72%) MLflow
3 16 (1.75%) ERwin
4 13 (1.42%) GitLab
5 8 (0.88%) JIRA
6 7 (0.77%) PowerDesigner
7 5 (0.55%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.44%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.44%) Metasploit
8 4 (0.44%) Selenium
9 2 (0.22%) 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
1 323 (35.38%) Finance
2 276 (30.23%) Social Skills
3 199 (21.80%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (9.97%) Banking
5 88 (9.64%) Marketing
6 82 (8.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 68 (7.45%) Pharmaceutical
8 57 (6.24%) Retail
9 49 (5.37%) Financial Institution
10 41 (4.49%) Law
11 31 (3.40%) Manufacturing
12 24 (2.63%) Public Sector
13 23 (2.52%) Legal
14 21 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (1.53%) Telecoms
16 12 (1.31%) Advertising
16 12 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
17 11 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
18 10 (1.10%) Games
19 9 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 196 (21.47%) Senior
2 190 (20.81%) Data Scientist
3 148 (16.21%) Lead
4 138 (15.12%) Data Engineer
5 88 (9.64%) Analyst
6 76 (8.32%) Senior Data Scientist
7 70 (7.67%) Data Analyst
8 52 (5.70%) Developer
9 49 (5.37%) Software Engineer
10 48 (5.26%) Consultant
11 44 (4.82%) Senior Data Engineer
12 31 (3.40%) Architect
13 23 (2.52%) Data Architect
14 21 (2.30%) Data Consultant
15 20 (2.19%) Senior Analyst
16 19 (2.08%) Python Engineer
16 19 (2.08%) Senior Consultant
17 17 (1.86%) Data Science Engineer
17 17 (1.86%) Senior Manager
18 16 (1.75%) Senior Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (8.54%) PyTorch
2 68 (7.45%) TensorFlow
3 43 (4.71%) PySpark
4 39 (4.27%) scikit-learn
5 33 (3.61%) LangChain
5 33 (3.61%) React
6 29 (3.18%) Pandas
7 20 (2.19%) HTML
7 20 (2.19%) Kafka
7 20 (2.19%) RESTful
8 15 (1.64%) CSS
8 15 (1.64%) NumPy
9 14 (1.53%) FastAPI
9 14 (1.53%) Hugging Face
10 12 (1.31%) .NET
10 12 (1.31%) Django
10 12 (1.31%) gRPC
10 12 (1.31%) REST
11 11 (1.20%) Jinja
11 11 (1.20%) NETCONF
Miscellaneous
1 95 (10.41%) Life Science
2 86 (9.42%) Algorithms
3 49 (5.37%) Product Ownership
4 45 (4.93%) Distributed Systems
5 43 (4.71%) Self-Motivation
6 35 (3.83%) Management Information System
7 27 (2.96%) Cloud Native
7 27 (2.96%) Data Structures
8 22 (2.41%) Onboarding
9 21 (2.30%) Pharmacovigilance
10 18 (1.97%) AI Agents
11 17 (1.86%) Video\Live Streaming
12 14 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
13 13 (1.42%) Omics
13 13 (1.42%) Social Media
14 12 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
14 12 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
14 12 (1.31%) Over-the-Top Content
15 10 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.10%) Linux
2 6 (0.66%) Unix
3 4 (0.44%) Android
3 4 (0.44%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.44%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 470 (51.48%) AI
1 470 (51.48%) Analytics
2 455 (49.84%) Machine Learning
3 227 (24.86%) Problem-Solving
4 221 (24.21%) Computer Science
5 218 (23.88%) Agile
6 204 (22.34%) Decision-Making
7 196 (21.47%) Business Intelligence
8 174 (19.06%) Data Engineering
9 165 (18.07%) Data Modelling
10 162 (17.74%) CI/CD
11 161 (17.63%) Data Pipeline
12 155 (16.98%) Data Analysis
13 148 (16.21%) Visualisation
14 146 (15.99%) Data Governance
15 140 (15.33%) ETL
15 140 (15.33%) Statistics
16 134 (14.68%) Roadmaps
17 132 (14.46%) Mentoring
18 129 (14.13%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 516 (56.52%) Python
2 296 (32.42%) SQL
3 70 (7.67%) R
4 63 (6.90%) Java
5 55 (6.02%) Scala
6 26 (2.85%) JavaScript
7 23 (2.52%) Go
8 20 (2.19%) VBA
9 18 (1.97%) C#
10 16 (1.75%) C++
11 14 (1.53%) TypeScript
12 11 (1.20%) Rust
13 10 (1.10%) MATLAB
14 9 (0.99%) Bash
15 8 (0.88%) Bicep
16 7 (0.77%) ANSI SQL
16 7 (0.77%) C
16 7 (0.77%) PHP
17 5 (0.55%) PowerShell
18 4 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 357 (39.10%) Degree
2 155 (16.98%) Master's Degree
3 93 (10.19%) Security Cleared
4 90 (9.86%) PhD
5 87 (9.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 70 (7.67%) SC Cleared
7 40 (4.38%) Numerate Degree
8 27 (2.96%) DV Cleared
9 22 (2.41%) MBA
10 18 (1.97%) DBS Check
11 12 (1.31%) Azure Certification
12 11 (1.20%) APMP
13 10 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.99%) AWS Certification
15 8 (0.88%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.77%) PMP
17 6 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
18 3 (0.33%) CFA
18 3 (0.33%) SAP Certification
19 2 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (16.98%) Data Quality
2 54 (5.91%) GDPR
3 43 (4.71%) GxP
4 35 (3.83%) Accessibility
5 22 (2.41%) EU AI Act
5 22 (2.41%) Solvency II
6 21 (2.30%) HIPAA
6 21 (2.30%) PSD2
7 20 (2.19%) QA
8 10 (1.10%) CDISC
8 10 (1.10%) HL7
9 7 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
10 6 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.33%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 3 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.33%) NIST
11 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.22%) PERC
System Software
1 72 (7.89%) Docker
2 3 (0.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 49 (5.37%) Kubernetes
2 29 (3.18%) Terraform
3 7 (0.77%) Ansible
4 4 (0.44%) Nessus
4 4 (0.44%) Nmap
5 3 (0.33%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.22%) Argo
6 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.22%) Puppet
7 1 (0.11%) Nagios
Vendors
1 117 (12.81%) Databricks
2 83 (9.09%) Microsoft
3 68 (7.45%) Google
4 31 (3.40%) Alteryx
4 31 (3.40%) Bloomberg
5 30 (3.29%) Salesforce
6 26 (2.85%) OpenAI
6 26 (2.85%) Oracle
7 23 (2.52%) Cisco
8 17 (1.86%) SAP
9 16 (1.75%) Informatica
10 14 (1.53%) Palantir
11 12 (1.31%) Talend
12 9 (0.99%) Foundry
12 9 (0.99%) Typelevel
13 5 (0.55%) BT
13 5 (0.55%) Red Hat
13 5 (0.55%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 4 (0.44%) Palo Alto
14 4 (0.44%) Qualtrics