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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 131 100
Rank change year-on-year -28 -31 -35
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 970 1,107 2,112
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.40% 2.34% 2.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.76% 2.51% 3.18%
Number of salaries quoted 514 502 1,308
10th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £42,286
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £47,875
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year - +3.70% -6.90%
75th Percentile £90,000 £90,000 £87,500
90th Percentile £103,375 £106,250 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year -4.00% +8.70% -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 54,960 44,026 66,518
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.09% 92.87% 88.40%
Number of salaries quoted 32,942 21,945 51,245
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,750 £29,494
25th Percentile £38,250 £45,651 £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 £81,250 £75,000
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% -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 25 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 25 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 -21 900 £70,000 - 736
London +20 473 £80,939 +1.17% 331
UK excluding London -72 431 £60,000 -4.00% 604
Work from Home -48 304 £67,500 +3.85% 238
South East -26 160 £60,000 -1.64% 214
North of England -63 95 £62,500 -2.34% 142
South West -40 69 £60,000 -12.73% 64
Midlands -25 67 £55,000 +15.79% 90
North West -6 64 £62,500 -3.85% 69
East Midlands -23 35 £40,000 -40.74% 56
West Midlands -16 32 £65,000 +44.44% 33
Yorkshire -59 26 £58,750 -8.20% 47
East of England -5 17 £81,850 +33.09% 44
Wales -3 11 £39,756 -51.81% 17
Scotland -66 11 £95,000 +100.00% 35
North East -18 5 £62,500 +25.00% 27
Northern Ireland -29 2 £40,000 -52.94% 9

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 70 (7.22%) Apache Spark
2 46 (4.74%) Apache Airflow
3 28 (2.89%) SharePoint
4 21 (2.16%) ArcGIS
5 20 (2.06%) Apache
6 11 (1.13%) Jupyter
7 7 (0.72%) SAS
8 6 (0.62%) Confluence
8 6 (0.62%) IIS
9 3 (0.31%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.31%) CMS
10 1 (0.10%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.10%) WordPress
Applications
1 74 (7.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (0.62%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.41%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
5 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.62%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.10%) Elite 3E
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
1 288 (29.69%) Azure
2 266 (27.42%) AWS
3 160 (16.49%) GCP
4 142 (14.64%) Power Platform
5 55 (5.67%) Snowflake
6 43 (4.43%) Azure Machine Learning
7 39 (4.02%) Azure AI
8 35 (3.61%) Amazon SageMaker
9 32 (3.30%) dbt
9 32 (3.30%) Vertex AI
10 29 (2.99%) Azure Data Factory
11 28 (2.89%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (2.78%) GitHub
13 25 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 24 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
14 24 (2.47%) SaaS
15 20 (2.06%) Dagster
16 19 (1.96%) PowerApps
17 18 (1.86%) Serverless
18 15 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 51 (5.26%) Broadband
2 11 (1.13%) 4G
2 11 (1.13%) BGP
2 11 (1.13%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.13%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.13%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.13%) MPLS
3 7 (0.72%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.52%) Firewall
5 4 (0.41%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.41%) HTTP
5 4 (0.41%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.41%) Kerberos
5 4 (0.41%) Modbus
5 4 (0.41%) Network Security
5 4 (0.41%) VLAN
5 4 (0.41%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.41%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.31%) MQTT
7 2 (0.21%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 135 (13.92%) Power BI
2 108 (11.13%) Data Warehouse
3 105 (10.82%) Tableau
4 73 (7.53%) Data Lake
5 54 (5.57%) Metadata
6 48 (4.95%) BigQuery
7 43 (4.43%) NoSQL
8 40 (4.12%) Big Data
9 38 (3.92%) Amazon Redshift
10 33 (3.40%) SQL Server
11 30 (3.09%) Data Mining
12 29 (2.99%) MongoDB
13 27 (2.78%) Hadoop
14 25 (2.58%) Elasticsearch
14 25 (2.58%) GIS
15 24 (2.47%) Looker
15 24 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
16 23 (2.37%) Delta Lake
16 23 (2.37%) QGIS
17 21 (2.16%) Spatial Data
Development Applications
1 62 (6.39%) Git
2 35 (3.61%) MLflow
3 16 (1.65%) ERwin
4 13 (1.34%) GitLab
5 9 (0.93%) JIRA
6 7 (0.72%) PowerDesigner
7 5 (0.52%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.41%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.41%) Metasploit
8 4 (0.41%) Selenium
9 3 (0.31%) Jenkins
10 1 (0.10%) JUnit
10 1 (0.10%) MSBuild
10 1 (0.10%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.10%) TestNG
10 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 306 (31.55%) Finance
2 286 (29.48%) Social Skills
3 209 (21.55%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (9.38%) Banking
5 88 (9.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 82 (8.45%) Marketing
7 66 (6.80%) Pharmaceutical
8 54 (5.57%) Retail
9 45 (4.64%) Financial Institution
10 44 (4.54%) Law
11 35 (3.61%) Public Sector
12 25 (2.58%) Legal
13 24 (2.47%) Manufacturing
14 22 (2.27%) Organisational Skills
15 14 (1.44%) Telecoms
16 12 (1.24%) Advertising
16 12 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
17 11 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
18 10 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
19 9 (0.93%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 211 (21.75%) Data Scientist
2 200 (20.62%) Senior
3 150 (15.46%) Data Engineer
4 145 (14.95%) Lead
5 95 (9.79%) Analyst
6 83 (8.56%) Senior Data Scientist
7 72 (7.42%) Consultant
7 72 (7.42%) Data Analyst
8 54 (5.57%) Software Engineer
9 52 (5.36%) Senior Data Engineer
10 48 (4.95%) Developer
11 36 (3.71%) Architect
12 33 (3.40%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
13 24 (2.47%) Data Consultant
14 23 (2.37%) Data Architect
15 21 (2.16%) Python Engineer
16 20 (2.06%) Machine Learning Consultant
16 20 (2.06%) Senior Analyst
17 19 (1.96%) Senior Consultant
17 19 (1.96%) Spatial Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (10.31%) PyTorch
2 75 (7.73%) TensorFlow
3 38 (3.92%) scikit-learn
4 37 (3.81%) PySpark
5 32 (3.30%) LangChain
6 31 (3.20%) React
7 25 (2.58%) Kafka
7 25 (2.58%) Pandas
8 21 (2.16%) gRPC
9 20 (2.06%) HTML
10 17 (1.75%) RESTful
11 15 (1.55%) CSS
11 15 (1.55%) Hugging Face
12 14 (1.44%) Django
13 12 (1.24%) .NET
13 12 (1.24%) FastAPI
14 11 (1.13%) Jinja
14 11 (1.13%) NETCONF
14 11 (1.13%) NumPy
14 11 (1.13%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 99 (10.21%) Algorithms
2 92 (9.48%) Life Science
3 51 (5.26%) Product Ownership
4 50 (5.15%) Distributed Systems
5 36 (3.71%) Self-Motivation
6 31 (3.20%) Data Structures
6 31 (3.20%) Management Information System
6 31 (3.20%) Video\Live Streaming
7 25 (2.58%) Cloud Native
8 23 (2.37%) AI Agents
9 22 (2.27%) Over-the-Top Content
10 21 (2.16%) Pharmacovigilance
11 18 (1.86%) Social Media
12 17 (1.75%) Onboarding
13 14 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
14 13 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
15 12 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
16 10 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
17 9 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
17 9 (0.93%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 13 (1.34%) Linux
2 5 (0.52%) Unix
3 4 (0.41%) Android
3 4 (0.41%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.41%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.21%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 511 (52.68%) AI
2 493 (50.82%) Analytics
3 484 (49.90%) Machine Learning
4 230 (23.71%) Problem-Solving
5 228 (23.51%) Computer Science
6 223 (22.99%) Agile
7 205 (21.13%) Decision-Making
8 197 (20.31%) Business Intelligence
9 178 (18.35%) Data Engineering
10 177 (18.25%) Data Analysis
11 171 (17.63%) Data Pipeline
12 170 (17.53%) CI/CD
13 168 (17.32%) Data Modelling
14 158 (16.29%) Visualisation
15 146 (15.05%) Mentoring
16 141 (14.54%) Data Governance
16 141 (14.54%) Mathematics
17 138 (14.23%) Statistics
18 137 (14.12%) ETL
19 136 (14.02%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 559 (57.63%) Python
2 301 (31.03%) SQL
3 72 (7.42%) R
4 68 (7.01%) Java
5 66 (6.80%) Scala
6 33 (3.40%) Go
7 28 (2.89%) JavaScript
8 22 (2.27%) VBA
9 21 (2.16%) C++
10 17 (1.75%) C#
11 11 (1.13%) Rust
11 11 (1.13%) TypeScript
12 9 (0.93%) Bash
13 7 (0.72%) ANSI SQL
13 7 (0.72%) PHP
14 6 (0.62%) Bicep
14 6 (0.62%) C
14 6 (0.62%) MATLAB
14 6 (0.62%) T-SQL
15 5 (0.52%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 366 (37.73%) Degree
2 152 (15.67%) Master's Degree
3 107 (11.03%) Security Cleared
4 90 (9.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 83 (8.56%) PhD
6 71 (7.32%) SC Cleared
7 41 (4.23%) Numerate Degree
8 39 (4.02%) DV Cleared
9 24 (2.47%) MBA
10 21 (2.16%) DBS Check
11 16 (1.65%) Azure Certification
12 13 (1.34%) APMP
13 10 (1.03%) BPSS Clearance
14 9 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 9 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (0.82%) PMI Certification
16 7 (0.72%) PMP
17 3 (0.31%) SAP Certification
18 2 (0.21%) AWS Certified Developer
19 1 (0.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 165 (17.01%) Data Quality
2 59 (6.08%) GDPR
3 52 (5.36%) Accessibility
4 39 (4.02%) GxP
5 31 (3.20%) QA
6 22 (2.27%) EU AI Act
6 22 (2.27%) Solvency II
7 21 (2.16%) HIPAA
7 21 (2.16%) PSD2
8 9 (0.93%) Actionable Recommendations
9 7 (0.72%) CDISC
9 7 (0.72%) HL7
10 6 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.31%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 3 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.31%) PERC
11 3 (0.31%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.21%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.21%) NIST
12 2 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 88 (9.07%) Docker
2 4 (0.41%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 59 (6.08%) Kubernetes
2 36 (3.71%) Terraform
3 6 (0.62%) Ansible
4 4 (0.41%) Nessus
4 4 (0.41%) Nmap
5 3 (0.31%) Kubeflow
6 2 (0.21%) Argo
7 1 (0.10%) Nagios
Vendors
1 113 (11.65%) Databricks
2 85 (8.76%) Microsoft
3 76 (7.84%) Google
4 31 (3.20%) Alteryx
4 31 (3.20%) Bloomberg
5 30 (3.09%) Salesforce
6 26 (2.68%) OpenAI
7 24 (2.47%) Oracle
8 23 (2.37%) Cisco
9 19 (1.96%) Typelevel
10 14 (1.44%) Palantir
11 13 (1.34%) Informatica
12 12 (1.24%) SAP
13 9 (0.93%) Foundry
13 9 (0.93%) Talend
14 5 (0.52%) BT
14 5 (0.52%) Red Hat
14 5 (0.52%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
14 5 (0.52%) ServiceNow
15 4 (0.41%) Dell