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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 154 143
Rank change year-on-year +19 -11 -21
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,609 1,018 1,342
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.37% 2.07% 1.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.87% 2.33% 2.19%
Number of salaries quoted 963 491 579
10th Percentile £44,562 £41,750 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £52,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £71,193 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +5.35% +5.47% -4.36%
75th Percentile £95,000 £94,375 £90,000
90th Percentile £107,500 £115,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £57,500 £61,000
% change year-on-year +26.09% -5.74% -6.15%

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 86,023 43,711 61,337
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.11% 89.05% 81.75%
Number of salaries quoted 59,242 24,267 33,446
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,880 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £58,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -5.17% -3.33%
75th Percentile £79,688 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 29 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 29 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 +19 1,494 £75,000 +7.14% 3,316
UK excluding London +19 805 £72,500 +26.09% 1,255
London +1 730 £85,000 - 2,209
Work from Home +53 480 £75,000 +15.38% 1,328
North of England +84 278 £75,026 +36.41% 324
North West +69 169 £75,000 +30.43% 191
South East -68 166 £70,000 +27.27% 283
Midlands +15 139 £60,000 +1.27% 151
South West -19 121 £60,000 -14.29% 177
East Midlands +11 84 £67,500 +68.75% 70
Yorkshire +27 76 £75,000 +35.79% 101
West Midlands -19 55 £41,494 -39.65% 81
North East -41 33 £80,000 +68.42% 32
Scotland +17 32 £75,026 -10.40% 93
East of England -38 31 £67,500 +12.50% 130
Wales -46 30 £75,000 +49.63% 52
Northern Ireland -78 8 £72,500 +81.25% 56

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
1 113 (7.02%) Apache Spark
2 45 (2.80%) Apache
3 28 (1.74%) Apache Airflow
4 15 (0.93%) SAS
5 9 (0.56%) SharePoint
6 8 (0.50%) Jupyter
7 6 (0.37%) Confluence
8 5 (0.31%) ColdFusion
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
9 2 (0.12%) Luigi
9 2 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
9 2 (0.12%) Tornado
10 1 (0.062%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.062%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.062%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.062%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.062%) R Markdown
Applications
1 50 (3.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.31%) Chatbot
5 3 (0.19%) SPSS
6 2 (0.12%) Final Cut Pro
6 2 (0.12%) Simulink
7 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.062%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.44%) Infor M3
2 1 (0.062%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
2 1 (0.062%) HFM
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 345 (21.44%) AWS
2 335 (20.82%) Azure
3 178 (11.06%) GCP
4 137 (8.51%) Power Platform
5 90 (5.59%) Snowflake
6 76 (4.72%) Azure Data Factory
7 56 (3.48%) Serverless
8 52 (3.23%) Anthropic Claude
9 49 (3.05%) Amazon Bedrock
10 48 (2.98%) SaaS
11 47 (2.92%) Azure Machine Learning
12 45 (2.80%) AWS Lambda
13 43 (2.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 39 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
15 36 (2.24%) Azure Databricks
16 35 (2.18%) GitHub
17 32 (1.99%) Amazon S3
18 27 (1.68%) Microsoft Purview
19 24 (1.49%) dbt
20 20 (1.24%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 20 (1.24%) Broadband
2 7 (0.44%) 5G
3 6 (0.37%) BGP
3 6 (0.37%) DNS
3 6 (0.37%) IPsec
3 6 (0.37%) VPN
4 4 (0.25%) Internet
5 2 (0.12%) Firewall
5 2 (0.12%) Software-Defined Radio
6 1 (0.062%) HTTP
6 1 (0.062%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (8.20%) Power BI
2 95 (5.90%) Data Warehouse
3 84 (5.22%) Tableau
4 77 (4.79%) Data Lake
5 69 (4.29%) Metadata
6 68 (4.23%) Big Data
7 52 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
7 52 (3.23%) NoSQL
8 38 (2.36%) Delta Lake
8 38 (2.36%) SQL Server
9 37 (2.30%) Relational Database
10 35 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
11 30 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
12 27 (1.68%) Hadoop
12 27 (1.68%) Looker
13 25 (1.55%) Data Mining
14 24 (1.49%) MongoDB
15 23 (1.43%) BigQuery
15 23 (1.43%) Spark SQL
16 20 (1.24%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 99 (6.15%) Git
2 44 (2.73%) Claude Code
3 29 (1.80%) MLflow
4 11 (0.68%) Jenkins
4 11 (0.68%) JIRA
5 9 (0.56%) GitLab
6 5 (0.31%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.25%) Octopus Deploy
8 2 (0.12%) JUnit
8 2 (0.12%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.062%) NUnit
9 1 (0.062%) Selenium
9 1 (0.062%) Yeoman
General
1 435 (27.04%) Finance
2 335 (20.82%) Social Skills
3 289 (17.96%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (9.14%) Banking
5 139 (8.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 136 (8.45%) Marketing
7 93 (5.78%) Retail
8 86 (5.34%) Law
9 85 (5.28%) Public Sector
10 52 (3.23%) Legal
11 42 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
12 37 (2.30%) Financial Institution
13 33 (2.05%) Organisational Skills
14 29 (1.80%) Advertising
15 27 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
16 26 (1.62%) Games
17 24 (1.49%) Manufacturing
18 20 (1.24%) Back Office
19 14 (0.87%) Publishing
20 13 (0.81%) Military
Job Titles
1 632 (39.28%) Data Scientist
2 415 (25.79%) Senior
3 348 (21.63%) Senior Data Scientist
4 232 (14.42%) Lead
5 194 (12.06%) Data Engineer
6 102 (6.34%) Lead Data Scientist
7 98 (6.09%) Software Engineer
8 90 (5.59%) Architect
9 77 (4.79%) Analyst
10 63 (3.92%) Developer
11 61 (3.79%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 43 (2.67%) Consultant
13 42 (2.61%) Senior Data Engineer
14 39 (2.42%) Data Analyst
14 39 (2.42%) Research Scientist
15 38 (2.36%) Enterprise Architect
16 36 (2.24%) Finance Manager
17 35 (2.18%) Data Architect
18 32 (1.99%) Principal Data Scientist
19 31 (1.93%) Machine Learning Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 114 (7.09%) PyTorch
2 104 (6.46%) TensorFlow
3 80 (4.97%) PySpark
4 67 (4.16%) scikit-learn
5 65 (4.04%) LangChain
6 59 (3.67%) Terraform
7 56 (3.48%) Kafka
8 49 (3.05%) LangGraph
8 49 (3.05%) Pandas
9 39 (2.42%) Hugging Face
10 36 (2.24%) React
11 34 (2.11%) .NET
12 33 (2.05%) NumPy
13 25 (1.55%) SpaCy
14 24 (1.49%) REST
15 19 (1.18%) Spring
16 18 (1.12%) RESTful
17 17 (1.06%) FastAPI
18 16 (0.99%) Flask
19 13 (0.81%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 109 (6.77%) AI Agents
2 101 (6.28%) Algorithms
3 97 (6.03%) Cloud Native
4 54 (3.36%) Product Ownership
5 46 (2.86%) Onboarding
6 43 (2.67%) Hedge funds
7 33 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
8 30 (1.86%) Data Structures
9 25 (1.55%) Blog
10 24 (1.49%) e-Learning
11 23 (1.43%) Management Information System
12 18 (1.12%) Credit Risk
12 18 (1.12%) Social Media
13 15 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
14 12 (0.75%) Clustering
14 12 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
14 12 (0.75%) Life Science
14 12 (0.75%) Marketing Technology
14 12 (0.75%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 27 (1.68%) Linux
2 12 (0.75%) Windows
3 4 (0.25%) Embedded Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.19%) Apple iOS
4 3 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.19%) Rocky
5 2 (0.12%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 825 (51.27%) AI
2 762 (47.36%) Machine Learning
3 614 (38.16%) Analytics
4 292 (18.15%) CI/CD
5 288 (17.90%) Decision-Making
6 265 (16.47%) Software Engineering
7 253 (15.72%) Problem-Solving
8 252 (15.66%) Data Engineering
9 251 (15.60%) Agile
10 250 (15.54%) Roadmaps
11 248 (15.41%) Data Pipeline
12 228 (14.17%) Mentoring
13 221 (13.74%) Generative AI
14 211 (13.11%) Business Intelligence
15 195 (12.12%) Actionable Insight
16 192 (11.93%) MLOps
17 178 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
18 175 (10.88%) Data Modelling
19 172 (10.69%) DevOps
20 165 (10.25%) LLM
Programming Languages
1 668 (41.52%) Python
2 476 (29.58%) SQL
3 95 (5.90%) Java
4 66 (4.10%) C++
5 59 (3.67%) JavaScript
6 56 (3.48%) C#
7 49 (3.05%) R
8 45 (2.80%) Scala
9 21 (1.31%) Bicep
9 21 (1.31%) C
10 20 (1.24%) TypeScript
11 13 (0.81%) Go
12 12 (0.75%) VBA
13 10 (0.62%) Kotlin
13 10 (0.62%) PHP
14 6 (0.37%) Bash
14 6 (0.37%) Groovy
14 6 (0.37%) Ruby
14 6 (0.37%) Shell Script
15 5 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 313 (19.45%) Degree
2 177 (11.00%) Security Cleared
3 90 (5.59%) DV Cleared
4 84 (5.22%) Master's Degree
5 78 (4.85%) SC Cleared
6 65 (4.04%) PhD
7 49 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 39 (2.42%) Azure Certification
9 23 (1.43%) DBS Check
10 19 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (1.06%) BPSS Clearance
12 16 (0.99%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.99%) SnowPro
13 10 (0.62%) PMI Certification
13 10 (0.62%) PMP
14 9 (0.56%) Numerate Degree
15 7 (0.44%) Postgraduate
16 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 4 (0.25%) CISSP
18 3 (0.19%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (13.05%) Data Quality
2 39 (2.42%) QA
3 38 (2.36%) GDPR
4 25 (1.55%) Accessibility
5 14 (0.87%) Actionable Recommendations
6 12 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 8 (0.50%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.19%) IFRS
8 3 (0.19%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.12%) DICOM
9 2 (0.12%) HL7
9 2 (0.12%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 2 (0.12%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.12%) WCAG
10 1 (0.062%) Good Clinical Practice
10 1 (0.062%) GRC
10 1 (0.062%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.062%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.062%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 77 (4.79%) Docker
2 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
2 3 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
2 3 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (0.19%) vSphere
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.062%) Firmware
4 1 (0.062%) IAG
4 1 (0.062%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 69 (4.29%) Kubernetes
2 13 (0.81%) Kubeflow
3 7 (0.44%) Ansible
4 6 (0.37%) Hadoop YARN
5 4 (0.25%) Argo
6 3 (0.19%) Grafana
6 3 (0.19%) Kibana
7 2 (0.12%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.12%) Computer Incident Response Team
7 2 (0.12%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.12%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.062%) Puppet
Vendors
1 217 (13.49%) Databricks
2 134 (8.33%) Microsoft
3 93 (5.78%) Google
4 26 (1.62%) OpenAI
5 18 (1.12%) Oracle
6 17 (1.06%) Workday
7 15 (0.93%) LexisNexis
8 12 (0.75%) SAP
9 9 (0.56%) Infor
10 7 (0.44%) Foundry
10 7 (0.44%) IBM
11 6 (0.37%) HP
11 6 (0.37%) Salesforce
12 5 (0.31%) Alteryx
12 5 (0.31%) Mistral
12 5 (0.31%) YouTube
13 4 (0.25%) CA Agile Central
13 4 (0.25%) Revolut
14 3 (0.19%) New Relic
14 3 (0.19%) Palantir