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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 158 137 114
Rank change year-on-year -21 -23 -48
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,000 999 2,150
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.36% 2.29% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.74% 2.44% 2.94%
Number of salaries quoted 514 511 1,303
10th Percentile £44,650 £42,500 £41,250
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 £90,601 £88,750
90th Percentile £103,375 £115,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £61,250 £57,500
% change year-on-year +2.04% +6.52% -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 57,440 40,902 73,209
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.10% 93.61% 87.44%
Number of salaries quoted 34,676 22,163 55,834
10th Percentile £29,750 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.31%
75th Percentile £76,299 £80,000 £73,750
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% -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 12 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 12 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 -18 925 £70,000 - 892
London +30 490 £80,000 - 469
UK excluding London -62 443 £62,500 +2.04% 632
Work from Home -38 312 £66,720 +4.25% 324
South East -1 160 £65,000 +8.33% 232
North of England -65 94 £62,500 - 139
South West -37 75 £60,000 -14.29% 74
Midlands -27 70 £57,500 +17.95% 88
North West -4 65 £62,500 -2.15% 60
West Midlands -15 36 £65,000 +44.44% 28
East Midlands -27 34 £40,000 -44.83% 60
Yorkshire -78 24 £60,000 -5.74% 58
East of England -10 19 £84,288 +38.18% 56
Scotland -51 13 £90,000 +71.43% 36
Wales -7 10 £39,756 -51.81% 16
North East -25 5 £62,500 +25.00% 23
Northern Ireland -28 3 - - 8

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 (7.40%) Apache Spark
2 57 (5.70%) Apache Airflow
3 24 (2.40%) SharePoint
4 22 (2.20%) ArcGIS
5 20 (2.00%) Apache
6 10 (1.00%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.70%) SAS
8 6 (0.60%) Confluence
8 6 (0.60%) IIS
9 3 (0.30%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.30%) CMS
9 3 (0.30%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 62 (6.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.40%) Chatbot
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 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.10%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.10%) Odoo
3 1 (0.10%) SAP PLM
3 1 (0.10%) Sprinklr
3 1 (0.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 296 (29.60%) AWS
2 291 (29.10%) Azure
3 179 (17.90%) GCP
4 144 (14.40%) Power Platform
5 71 (7.10%) Snowflake
6 42 (4.20%) Azure Machine Learning
6 42 (4.20%) dbt
7 38 (3.80%) Azure AI
8 34 (3.40%) Amazon SageMaker
9 31 (3.10%) Vertex AI
10 30 (3.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 29 (2.90%) Azure DevOps
12 28 (2.80%) Azure Data Factory
13 26 (2.60%) GitHub
14 23 (2.30%) SaaS
15 22 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
16 20 (2.00%) Dagster
17 17 (1.70%) PowerApps
17 17 (1.70%) Serverless
18 16 (1.60%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 66 (6.60%) Broadband
2 11 (1.10%) 4G
2 11 (1.10%) BGP
2 11 (1.10%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.10%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.10%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.10%) MPLS
3 6 (0.60%) TCP/IP
4 4 (0.40%) HTTP
4 4 (0.40%) Kerberos
5 3 (0.30%) Bluetooth
5 3 (0.30%) Firewall
5 3 (0.30%) Internet
5 3 (0.30%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (0.30%) Modbus
5 3 (0.30%) MQTT
5 3 (0.30%) Network Security
5 3 (0.30%) VLAN
5 3 (0.30%) Wireshark
5 3 (0.30%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (13.60%) Power BI
2 124 (12.40%) Data Warehouse
3 104 (10.40%) Tableau
4 86 (8.60%) Data Lake
5 59 (5.90%) BigQuery
6 52 (5.20%) Metadata
7 45 (4.50%) Amazon Redshift
7 45 (4.50%) NoSQL
8 38 (3.80%) Elasticsearch
9 37 (3.70%) Big Data
10 34 (3.40%) MongoDB
11 31 (3.10%) SQL Server
12 30 (3.00%) GIS
12 30 (3.00%) Looker
12 30 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
13 26 (2.60%) Data Mining
13 26 (2.60%) QGIS
14 25 (2.50%) Hadoop
15 24 (2.40%) Delta Lake
16 22 (2.20%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 67 (6.70%) Git
2 42 (4.20%) MLflow
3 14 (1.40%) GitLab
4 8 (0.80%) JIRA
5 7 (0.70%) ERwin
5 7 (0.70%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.50%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.40%) Burp Suite
7 4 (0.40%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.30%) Metasploit
8 3 (0.30%) Selenium
9 1 (0.10%) MSBuild
9 1 (0.10%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 278 (27.80%) Finance
2 265 (26.50%) Social Skills
3 212 (21.20%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (9.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 89 (8.90%) Banking
6 81 (8.10%) Marketing
7 58 (5.80%) Retail
8 56 (5.60%) Pharmaceutical
9 41 (4.10%) Financial Institution
9 41 (4.10%) Law
9 41 (4.10%) Public Sector
10 22 (2.20%) Legal
10 22 (2.20%) Manufacturing
11 19 (1.90%) Organisational Skills
12 14 (1.40%) Advertising
12 14 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
12 14 (1.40%) Telecoms
13 11 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
14 10 (1.00%) Investment Banking
15 8 (0.80%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 224 (22.40%) Data Scientist
2 206 (20.60%) Senior
3 152 (15.20%) Data Engineer
4 134 (13.40%) Lead
5 88 (8.80%) Analyst
6 87 (8.70%) Senior Data Scientist
7 72 (7.20%) Consultant
8 70 (7.00%) Data Analyst
9 59 (5.90%) Software Engineer
10 51 (5.10%) Senior Data Engineer
11 50 (5.00%) Developer
12 33 (3.30%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
13 27 (2.70%) Architect
13 27 (2.70%) Data Consultant
14 26 (2.60%) Python Engineer
15 22 (2.20%) Scala Engineer
16 21 (2.10%) Machine Learning Consultant
17 20 (2.00%) Lead Data Scientist
17 20 (2.00%) Spatial Consultant
18 19 (1.90%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (10.70%) PyTorch
2 81 (8.10%) TensorFlow
3 41 (4.10%) scikit-learn
4 36 (3.60%) gRPC
4 36 (3.60%) LangChain
5 35 (3.50%) PySpark
6 32 (3.20%) Kafka
7 29 (2.90%) React
8 20 (2.00%) HTML
8 20 (2.00%) Pandas
9 19 (1.90%) RESTful
10 16 (1.60%) Django
11 15 (1.50%) CSS
12 13 (1.30%) .NET
12 13 (1.30%) FastAPI
13 12 (1.20%) REST
14 11 (1.10%) Jinja
14 11 (1.10%) NETCONF
14 11 (1.10%) YANG
15 10 (1.00%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 98 (9.80%) Algorithms
2 87 (8.70%) Life Science
3 60 (6.00%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (5.00%) Product Ownership
5 47 (4.70%) Video\Live Streaming
6 38 (3.80%) Over-the-Top Content
7 37 (3.70%) Management Information System
8 34 (3.40%) Self-Motivation
9 32 (3.20%) Cloud Native
10 25 (2.50%) Data Structures
11 24 (2.40%) AI Agents
12 21 (2.10%) Pharmacovigilance
13 19 (1.90%) Social Media
14 18 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
15 17 (1.70%) Onboarding
16 11 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
16 11 (1.10%) Clustering
16 11 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
17 10 (1.00%) IoT
17 10 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.30%) Linux
2 5 (0.50%) Unix
3 3 (0.30%) Android
3 3 (0.30%) Kali Linux
3 3 (0.30%) Ubuntu
3 3 (0.30%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 522 (52.20%) AI
2 498 (49.80%) Analytics
3 491 (49.10%) Machine Learning
4 238 (23.80%) Problem-Solving
5 217 (21.70%) Decision-Making
6 214 (21.40%) Agile
7 210 (21.00%) Business Intelligence
8 209 (20.90%) Computer Science
9 190 (19.00%) Data Engineering
10 184 (18.40%) CI/CD
11 177 (17.70%) Data Pipeline
12 167 (16.70%) Data Modelling
13 155 (15.50%) Data Analysis
14 150 (15.00%) Visualisation
15 142 (14.20%) ETL
15 142 (14.20%) Mentoring
16 136 (13.60%) Data Governance
17 135 (13.50%) Generative AI
18 133 (13.30%) Use Case
19 132 (13.20%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 570 (57.00%) Python
2 295 (29.50%) SQL
3 80 (8.00%) Scala
4 70 (7.00%) R
5 66 (6.60%) Java
6 48 (4.80%) Go
7 30 (3.00%) JavaScript
8 20 (2.00%) VBA
9 17 (1.70%) C++
10 14 (1.40%) C#
11 12 (1.20%) Bash
12 11 (1.10%) TypeScript
13 10 (1.00%) Rust
14 7 (0.70%) ANSI SQL
14 7 (0.70%) PHP
15 6 (0.60%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.50%) Bicep
16 5 (0.50%) C
16 5 (0.50%) PowerShell
17 4 (0.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 358 (35.80%) Degree
2 135 (13.50%) Master's Degree
3 104 (10.40%) Security Cleared
4 86 (8.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 68 (6.80%) PhD
6 65 (6.50%) SC Cleared
7 40 (4.00%) DV Cleared
8 38 (3.80%) Numerate Degree
9 24 (2.40%) MBA
10 21 (2.10%) DBS Check
11 17 (1.70%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.30%) APMP
13 11 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.80%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.70%) PMP
17 4 (0.40%) AWS Certification
18 3 (0.30%) SAP Certification
19 2 (0.20%) Postgraduate
20 1 (0.10%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (16.60%) Data Quality
2 58 (5.80%) Accessibility
3 56 (5.60%) GDPR
4 31 (3.10%) QA
5 30 (3.00%) GxP
6 22 (2.20%) Solvency II
7 21 (2.10%) EU AI Act
7 21 (2.10%) HIPAA
7 21 (2.10%) PSD2
8 11 (1.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 9 (0.90%) Actionable Recommendations
10 6 (0.60%) CDISC
10 6 (0.60%) 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 (0.10%) FINRA
14 1 (0.10%) GMP
14 1 (0.10%) IFRS
System Software
1 102 (10.20%) Docker
2 5 (0.50%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.10%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 59 (5.90%) Kubernetes
2 42 (4.20%) Terraform
3 6 (0.60%) Ansible
4 4 (0.40%) Kubeflow
5 3 (0.30%) Nessus
5 3 (0.30%) Nmap
6 2 (0.20%) Argo
7 1 (0.10%) Nagios
Vendors
1 129 (12.90%) Databricks
2 86 (8.60%) Microsoft
3 76 (7.60%) Google
4 34 (3.40%) Typelevel
5 31 (3.10%) Bloomberg
6 30 (3.00%) Alteryx
7 27 (2.70%) Salesforce
8 24 (2.40%) Dell
8 24 (2.40%) Informatica
8 24 (2.40%) OpenAI
9 22 (2.20%) Cisco
9 22 (2.20%) Oracle
10 14 (1.40%) Palantir
11 12 (1.20%) Denodo
11 12 (1.20%) SAP
11 12 (1.20%) Teradata
12 8 (0.80%) Cloudera
12 8 (0.80%) Foundry
12 8 (0.80%) Talend
13 7 (0.70%) ServiceNow