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 1 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 138 151
Rank change year-on-year +3 +13 -24
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,563 1,091 1,402
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.42% 2.18% 1.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.95% 2.46% 2.13%
Number of salaries quoted 917 507 684
10th Percentile £44,500 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £74,000 £68,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.35% +8.03% -3.15%
75th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £91,250
90th Percentile £105,500 £120,000 £112,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £58,000 £61,500
% change year-on-year +20.69% -5.69% -1.60%

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 80,269 44,315 65,850
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.06% 88.64% 80.88%
Number of salaries quoted 55,761 25,263 40,217
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £56,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.79% -6.67%
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 £51,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.86% -6.87%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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% 3,137
UK excluding London +7 767 £70,000 +20.69% 1,227
London +6 723 £81,250 -4.41% 2,225
Work from Home +60 484 £75,000 +15.38% 1,053
North of England +96 257 £75,026 +36.12% 283
North West +77 161 £75,000 +33.33% 169
South East -95 144 £70,000 +27.27% 286
Midlands +18 128 £60,000 -7.34% 150
South West -8 123 £60,000 -14.29% 183
East Midlands +31 80 £70,000 +43.59% 63
Yorkshire +8 66 £72,500 +26.09% 85
East of England -9 49 £72,500 +20.83% 148
West Midlands -10 48 £35,000 -47.17% 87
Scotland -7 30 £75,026 -10.40% 112
North East -35 30 £80,000 +68.42% 31
Wales -40 29 £75,000 +76.21% 45
Northern Ireland -73 7 £55,000 - 40

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
1 125 (8.00%) Apache Spark
2 53 (3.39%) 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 (3.33%) 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 3 (0.19%) Infor M3
2 1 (0.064%) HFM
2 1 (0.064%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.064%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 384 (24.57%) AWS
2 346 (22.14%) Azure
3 212 (13.56%) GCP
4 163 (10.43%) Power Platform
5 124 (7.93%) Snowflake
6 73 (4.67%) Azure Data Factory
7 66 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 56 (3.58%) Serverless
9 52 (3.33%) dbt
10 43 (2.75%) SaaS
11 40 (2.56%) Amazon Bedrock
11 40 (2.56%) Anthropic Claude
11 40 (2.56%) AWS Lambda
12 37 (2.37%) Azure Machine Learning
13 35 (2.24%) Amazon S3
14 32 (2.05%) Azure Databricks
15 31 (1.98%) Azure DevOps
16 28 (1.79%) GitHub
17 24 (1.54%) Microsoft Purview
18 19 (1.22%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 44 (2.82%) 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
1 158 (10.11%) Power BI
2 140 (8.96%) Data Warehouse
3 115 (7.36%) Data Lake
4 111 (7.10%) Tableau
5 74 (4.73%) Amazon Redshift
6 61 (3.90%) Big Data
7 60 (3.84%) Metadata
8 57 (3.65%) NoSQL
9 51 (3.26%) Looker
10 47 (3.01%) BigQuery
11 38 (2.43%) PostgreSQL
12 37 (2.37%) Relational Database
13 36 (2.30%) SQL Server
14 34 (2.18%) Elasticsearch
15 32 (2.05%) Azure SQL Database
15 32 (2.05%) Delta Lake
16 29 (1.86%) MongoDB
17 27 (1.73%) Data Mining
17 27 (1.73%) Hadoop
18 24 (1.54%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 94 (6.01%) Git
2 46 (2.94%) MLflow
3 31 (1.98%) Claude Code
4 14 (0.90%) 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%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.064%) Selenium
9 1 (0.064%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.064%) Yeoman
General
1 422 (27.00%) Finance
2 325 (20.79%) Social Skills
3 307 (19.64%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (8.83%) Marketing
5 133 (8.51%) Banking
6 132 (8.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 90 (5.76%) Retail
8 84 (5.37%) Public Sector
9 82 (5.25%) Law
10 41 (2.62%) Legal
11 34 (2.18%) Advertising
11 34 (2.18%) Financial Institution
12 33 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
13 31 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
14 25 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (1.41%) Games
16 20 (1.28%) Back Office
17 16 (1.02%) Manufacturing
18 15 (0.96%) Publishing
19 11 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 584 (37.36%) Data Scientist
2 388 (24.82%) Senior
3 316 (20.22%) Senior Data Scientist
4 228 (14.59%) Lead
5 186 (11.90%) Data Engineer
6 101 (6.46%) Software Engineer
7 100 (6.40%) Lead Data Scientist
8 78 (4.99%) Architect
9 75 (4.80%) Developer
10 71 (4.54%) Analyst
11 53 (3.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 47 (3.01%) Consultant
13 37 (2.37%) Data Analyst
13 37 (2.37%) Senior Data Engineer
14 35 (2.24%) Data Architect
14 35 (2.24%) Research Scientist
15 32 (2.05%) Machine Learning Scientist
16 29 (1.86%) Enterprise Architect
16 29 (1.86%) Principal Data Scientist
17 28 (1.79%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (8.96%) PyTorch
2 123 (7.87%) TensorFlow
3 96 (6.14%) scikit-learn
4 86 (5.50%) LangChain
5 80 (5.12%) Kafka
6 68 (4.35%) Terraform
7 64 (4.09%) PySpark
8 52 (3.33%) Pandas
9 47 (3.01%) LangGraph
10 36 (2.30%) LlamaIndex
11 35 (2.24%) React
12 34 (2.18%) Hugging Face
13 33 (2.11%) NumPy
14 28 (1.79%) pgvector
15 25 (1.60%) REST
16 22 (1.41%) .NET
16 22 (1.41%) SpaCy
17 21 (1.34%) Spring
18 20 (1.28%) FastAPI
18 20 (1.28%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 117 (7.49%) Cloud Native
2 99 (6.33%) Algorithms
3 95 (6.08%) AI Agents
4 53 (3.39%) Product Ownership
5 52 (3.33%) Onboarding
6 50 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
7 35 (2.24%) Clustering
8 34 (2.18%) Hedge funds
9 32 (2.05%) Public Cloud
9 32 (2.05%) Video\Live Streaming
10 30 (1.92%) Data Structures
11 25 (1.60%) Over-the-Top Content
12 24 (1.54%) Blog
13 21 (1.34%) e-Learning
13 21 (1.34%) Management Information System
13 21 (1.34%) Social Media
14 17 (1.09%) Credit Risk
15 16 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
15 16 (1.02%) Life Science
16 14 (0.90%) 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
1 811 (51.89%) AI
2 752 (48.11%) Machine Learning
3 628 (40.18%) Analytics
4 291 (18.62%) Decision-Making
5 289 (18.49%) CI/CD
6 283 (18.11%) Data Engineering
7 276 (17.66%) Software Engineering
8 258 (16.51%) Problem-Solving
9 256 (16.38%) Agile
10 254 (16.25%) Data Pipeline
11 246 (15.74%) Business Intelligence
11 246 (15.74%) Roadmaps
12 226 (14.46%) Mentoring
13 224 (14.33%) Generative AI
14 195 (12.48%) MLOps
15 192 (12.28%) Data Modelling
16 182 (11.64%) Actionable Insight
17 161 (10.30%) Visualisation
18 160 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
19 156 (9.98%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 691 (44.21%) Python
2 471 (30.13%) SQL
3 96 (6.14%) Java
4 58 (3.71%) Scala
5 55 (3.52%) C++
6 48 (3.07%) JavaScript
7 41 (2.62%) R
8 40 (2.56%) C#
9 30 (1.92%) Go
10 21 (1.34%) Bicep
11 20 (1.28%) C
12 19 (1.22%) TypeScript
13 14 (0.90%) VBA
14 11 (0.70%) Julia
15 10 (0.64%) Kotlin
15 10 (0.64%) PHP
16 8 (0.51%) Groovy
17 6 (0.38%) Ruby
18 5 (0.32%) Rust
19 4 (0.26%) Bash
Qualifications
1 334 (21.37%) Degree
2 165 (10.56%) Security Cleared
3 90 (5.76%) DV Cleared
4 83 (5.31%) Master's Degree
5 67 (4.29%) SC Cleared
6 63 (4.03%) PhD
7 49 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 35 (2.24%) Azure Certification
9 31 (1.98%) DBS Check
10 19 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
12 16 (1.02%) SnowPro
13 15 (0.96%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.58%) Numerate Degree
15 8 (0.51%) Postgraduate
16 6 (0.38%) PMI Certification
16 6 (0.38%) PMP
17 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 3 (0.19%) CISSP
18 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (12.16%) Data Quality
2 50 (3.20%) GDPR
3 37 (2.37%) QA
4 25 (1.60%) 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%) GRC
11 1 (0.064%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.064%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 1 (0.064%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 87 (5.57%) 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 68 (4.35%) 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
1 243 (15.55%) Databricks
2 131 (8.38%) Microsoft
3 89 (5.69%) Google
4 43 (2.75%) Dell
5 25 (1.60%) OpenAI
6 23 (1.47%) Cloudera
7 22 (1.41%) Informatica
7 22 (1.41%) Teradata
8 20 (1.28%) Denodo
9 19 (1.22%) 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