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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 128 111
Rank change year-on-year -31 -17 -43
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,049 1,011 2,227
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.36% 2.46% 2.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.76% 2.63% 2.93%
Number of salaries quoted 537 512 1,296
10th Percentile £44,500 £44,631 £42,250
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -3.57%
75th Percentile £90,000 £92,125 £87,813
90th Percentile £102,500 £115,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year - +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 59,591 38,445 75,955
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.47% 93.42% 86.89%
Number of salaries quoted 36,208 22,191 57,021
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £101,250 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 25 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 25 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 -22 974 £70,932 +1.33% 737
London +21 518 £80,000 - 384
UK excluding London -77 458 £62,500 - 486
Work from Home -30 322 £70,000 +7.69% 272
South East -27 155 £65,000 +8.33% 166
North of England -60 94 £62,500 -1.98% 119
South West -56 78 £60,000 -14.29% 69
Midlands -39 75 £57,500 - 65
North West -11 63 £65,000 +0.87% 63
West Midlands -15 40 £62,500 +38.89% 27
East Midlands -33 35 £45,000 -37.93% 38
East of England -12 32 £86,725 +42.17% 34
Yorkshire -64 26 £60,000 -5.74% 37
Scotland -60 13 £90,000 +63.64% 21
Wales -15 8 £39,756 -51.81% 15
North East -26 5 £62,500 - 21
Northern Ireland -36 3 - - 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 86 (8.20%) Apache Spark
2 73 (6.96%) Apache Airflow
3 22 (2.10%) ArcGIS
3 22 (2.10%) SharePoint
4 20 (1.91%) Apache
5 10 (0.95%) Jupyter
6 7 (0.67%) SAS
7 5 (0.48%) Confluence
7 5 (0.48%) IIS
8 4 (0.38%) GeoServer
9 3 (0.29%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.29%) CMS
10 1 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.095%) WordPress
Applications
1 57 (5.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (0.38%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.29%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.57%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.095%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.095%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.095%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.095%) Odoo
3 1 (0.095%) SAP PLM
3 1 (0.095%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 318 (30.31%) AWS
2 316 (30.12%) Azure
3 195 (18.59%) GCP
4 158 (15.06%) Power Platform
5 97 (9.25%) Snowflake
6 59 (5.62%) dbt
7 46 (4.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 45 (4.29%) Azure Machine Learning
9 38 (3.62%) Azure AI
10 35 (3.34%) Amazon SageMaker
11 32 (3.05%) Azure Data Factory
11 32 (3.05%) Vertex AI
12 28 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
13 24 (2.29%) GitHub
13 24 (2.29%) SaaS
14 20 (1.91%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (1.81%) Dagster
16 17 (1.62%) Serverless
17 16 (1.53%) Amazon S3
17 16 (1.53%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 73 (6.96%) Broadband
2 11 (1.05%) 4G
2 11 (1.05%) BGP
2 11 (1.05%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.05%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.05%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.05%) MPLS
3 4 (0.38%) Kerberos
4 3 (0.29%) HTTP
4 3 (0.29%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.19%) Internet
5 2 (0.19%) MQTT
5 2 (0.19%) Software-Defined Radio
5 2 (0.19%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.095%) Firewall
6 1 (0.095%) LTE
6 1 (0.095%) Modbus
6 1 (0.095%) Network Security
6 1 (0.095%) TCAP
6 1 (0.095%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 150 (14.30%) Power BI
2 149 (14.20%) Data Warehouse
3 119 (11.34%) Tableau
4 105 (10.01%) Data Lake
5 74 (7.05%) BigQuery
6 56 (5.34%) Elasticsearch
7 54 (5.15%) Amazon Redshift
8 49 (4.67%) Metadata
8 49 (4.67%) NoSQL
9 47 (4.48%) Looker
10 36 (3.43%) Big Data
11 35 (3.34%) MongoDB
12 32 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
13 31 (2.96%) GIS
14 29 (2.76%) SQL Server
15 27 (2.57%) Data Mining
15 27 (2.57%) QGIS
16 26 (2.48%) Snowflake Schema
17 25 (2.38%) Hadoop
18 23 (2.19%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 67 (6.39%) Git
2 58 (5.53%) MLflow
3 14 (1.33%) GitLab
4 8 (0.76%) JIRA
5 7 (0.67%) ERwin
5 7 (0.67%) PowerDesigner
6 6 (0.57%) Jenkins
7 4 (0.38%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.29%) Selenium
9 2 (0.19%) Burp Suite
10 1 (0.095%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.095%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.095%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.095%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 269 (25.64%) Finance
2 262 (24.98%) Social Skills
3 235 (22.40%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (9.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 87 (8.29%) Banking
6 81 (7.72%) Marketing
7 60 (5.72%) Retail
8 54 (5.15%) Pharmaceutical
9 46 (4.39%) Public Sector
10 41 (3.91%) Law
11 39 (3.72%) Financial Institution
12 24 (2.29%) Legal
13 21 (2.00%) Manufacturing
14 18 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
15 15 (1.43%) Advertising
16 14 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (1.33%) Telecoms
17 11 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
18 9 (0.86%) Investment Banking
19 6 (0.57%) Games
Job Titles
1 245 (23.36%) Data Scientist
2 226 (21.54%) Senior
3 155 (14.78%) Data Engineer
4 139 (13.25%) Lead
5 100 (9.53%) Senior Data Scientist
6 82 (7.82%) Analyst
7 74 (7.05%) Consultant
8 66 (6.29%) Data Analyst
9 61 (5.82%) Software Engineer
10 52 (4.96%) Developer
11 50 (4.77%) Senior Data Engineer
12 33 (3.15%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
13 30 (2.86%) Systems Engineer
14 28 (2.67%) Architect
15 27 (2.57%) Data Consultant
16 25 (2.38%) Lead Data Scientist
16 25 (2.38%) Python Engineer
17 24 (2.29%) Data Management Specialist
17 24 (2.29%) Product Specialist
17 24 (2.29%) Scala Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (12.30%) PyTorch
2 97 (9.25%) TensorFlow
3 61 (5.82%) scikit-learn
4 49 (4.67%) LangChain
5 48 (4.58%) Kafka
6 38 (3.62%) gRPC
7 31 (2.96%) PySpark
7 31 (2.96%) React
8 24 (2.29%) LlamaIndex
9 23 (2.19%) pgvector
10 22 (2.10%) Pandas
11 20 (1.91%) RESTful
12 19 (1.81%) HTML
13 18 (1.72%) Django
14 15 (1.43%) CSS
15 13 (1.24%) .NET
15 13 (1.24%) Node.js
16 12 (1.14%) FastAPI
16 12 (1.14%) XGBoost
17 11 (1.05%) NETCONF
Miscellaneous
1 97 (9.25%) Algorithms
2 83 (7.91%) Life Science
3 62 (5.91%) Distributed Systems
4 50 (4.77%) Video\Live Streaming
5 48 (4.58%) Product Ownership
6 44 (4.19%) Cloud Native
7 41 (3.91%) Over-the-Top Content
8 38 (3.62%) Management Information System
9 32 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
10 26 (2.48%) Clustering
10 26 (2.48%) Data Structures
11 25 (2.38%) Public Cloud
12 23 (2.19%) AI Agents
13 21 (2.00%) Pharmacovigilance
14 20 (1.91%) Greenfield Project
14 20 (1.91%) Onboarding
14 20 (1.91%) Social Media
15 11 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (1.05%) Hackathon
15 11 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 11 (1.05%) Linux
2 5 (0.48%) Unix
3 2 (0.19%) Windows
4 1 (0.095%) Android
4 1 (0.095%) Kali Linux
4 1 (0.095%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (53.77%) AI
2 523 (49.86%) Machine Learning
3 521 (49.67%) Analytics
4 247 (23.55%) Problem-Solving
5 230 (21.93%) Business Intelligence
6 223 (21.26%) Data Engineering
7 218 (20.78%) Agile
7 218 (20.78%) Decision-Making
8 211 (20.11%) Computer Science
9 191 (18.21%) CI/CD
10 186 (17.73%) Data Pipeline
11 183 (17.45%) Data Modelling
12 161 (15.35%) Use Case
13 157 (14.97%) ETL
14 153 (14.59%) Data Analysis
15 151 (14.39%) Generative AI
16 149 (14.20%) Visualisation
17 145 (13.82%) Mentoring
18 139 (13.25%) Data Governance
19 138 (13.16%) Mathematics
Programming Languages
1 591 (56.34%) Python
2 310 (29.55%) SQL
3 84 (8.01%) Scala
4 71 (6.77%) Java
4 71 (6.77%) R
5 51 (4.86%) Go
6 32 (3.05%) JavaScript
7 19 (1.81%) VBA
8 16 (1.53%) C++
9 15 (1.43%) C#
10 12 (1.14%) Bash
10 12 (1.14%) TypeScript
11 8 (0.76%) Rust
11 8 (0.76%) T-SQL
12 6 (0.57%) ANSI SQL
12 6 (0.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 6 (0.57%) PHP
13 5 (0.48%) Bicep
13 5 (0.48%) Julia
14 4 (0.38%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 362 (34.51%) Degree
2 130 (12.39%) Master's Degree
3 105 (10.01%) Security Cleared
4 88 (8.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (6.10%) PhD
6 58 (5.53%) SC Cleared
7 45 (4.29%) DV Cleared
8 35 (3.34%) Numerate Degree
9 25 (2.38%) DBS Check
10 20 (1.91%) MBA
11 17 (1.62%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.24%) APMP
13 8 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (0.76%) PMI Certification
14 7 (0.67%) PMP
15 5 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
16 3 (0.29%) AWS Certification
16 3 (0.29%) SAP Certification
17 2 (0.19%) Postgraduate
18 1 (0.095%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 167 (15.92%) Data Quality
2 70 (6.67%) GDPR
3 56 (5.34%) Accessibility
4 30 (2.86%) QA
5 26 (2.48%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 25 (2.38%) GxP
7 21 (2.00%) EU AI Act
7 21 (2.00%) HIPAA
7 21 (2.00%) PSD2
7 21 (2.00%) Solvency II
8 9 (0.86%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (0.38%) CDISC
9 4 (0.38%) HL7
10 3 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.29%) PERC
11 2 (0.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 2 (0.19%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.095%) FINRA
12 1 (0.095%) GMP
12 1 (0.095%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 102 (9.72%) Docker
2 5 (0.48%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.19%) Firmware
4 1 (0.095%) IAG
Systems Management
1 62 (5.91%) Kubernetes
2 45 (4.29%) Terraform
3 7 (0.67%) Kubeflow
4 6 (0.57%) Ansible
5 2 (0.19%) Argo
6 1 (0.095%) Nagios
6 1 (0.095%) Nessus
6 1 (0.095%) Nmap
Vendors
1 162 (15.44%) Databricks
2 86 (8.20%) Microsoft
3 71 (6.77%) Google
4 51 (4.86%) Dell
5 36 (3.43%) Informatica
5 36 (3.43%) Typelevel
6 30 (2.86%) Alteryx
6 30 (2.86%) Bloomberg
7 24 (2.29%) Denodo
7 24 (2.29%) Salesforce
7 24 (2.29%) Teradata
8 23 (2.19%) Cloudera
9 22 (2.10%) Oracle
10 21 (2.00%) OpenAI
11 20 (1.91%) Cisco
12 14 (1.33%) Palantir
13 12 (1.14%) SAP
14 8 (0.76%) Foundry
14 8 (0.76%) Talend
15 7 (0.67%) ServiceNow