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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 142 147
Rank change year-on-year +11 +5 -17
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 1,562 1,092 1,401
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.42% 2.19% 1.72%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.94% 2.47% 2.13%
Number of salaries quoted 928 507 684
10th Percentile £44,500 £42,500 £42,500
25th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £75,000 £72,500 £68,500
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.84% -2.94%
75th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £91,250
90th Percentile £105,000 £120,000 £112,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £57,500 £61,500
% change year-on-year +21.74% -6.50% -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 80,408 44,155 65,787
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.60% 80.85%
Number of salaries quoted 55,868 25,145 40,215
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 £56,075
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.92% -6.54%
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% -6.58%

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 2 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 2 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 1,456 £75,000 +3.45% 3,277
UK excluding London +17 772 £70,000 +21.74% 1,266
London +4 716 £82,500 -2.94% 2,329
Work from Home +50 487 £75,000 +15.38% 1,062
North of England +97 260 £75,000 +35.79% 277
North West +79 161 £75,000 +30.43% 163
South East -87 145 £70,000 +27.27% 309
Midlands +20 130 £60,000 -7.34% 153
South West -8 124 £61,250 -12.50% 184
East Midlands +24 80 £70,000 +43.59% 69
Yorkshire +1 68 £70,000 +21.74% 83
West Midlands -12 50 £35,000 -47.17% 84
East of England -12 47 £72,500 +20.83% 160
North East -30 31 £80,000 +68.42% 32
Scotland -4 29 £75,026 -10.40% 117
Wales -42 29 £75,000 +76.21% 47
Northern Ireland -77 8 £72,500 - 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
1 121 (7.75%) Apache Spark
2 46 (2.94%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (2.75%) Apache
4 14 (0.90%) SAS
5 10 (0.64%) SharePoint
6 7 (0.45%) Confluence
6 7 (0.45%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.32%) ColdFusion
8 2 (0.13%) Apache Pulsar
8 2 (0.13%) GeoServer
8 2 (0.13%) Luigi
8 2 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
8 2 (0.13%) Tornado
9 1 (0.064%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.064%) ArcGIS
9 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
1 382 (24.46%) AWS
2 339 (21.70%) Azure
3 208 (13.32%) GCP
4 159 (10.18%) Power Platform
5 117 (7.49%) Snowflake
6 73 (4.67%) Azure Data Factory
7 62 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 58 (3.71%) Serverless
9 46 (2.94%) dbt
10 45 (2.88%) AWS Lambda
11 43 (2.75%) SaaS
12 40 (2.56%) Amazon Bedrock
12 40 (2.56%) Anthropic Claude
13 37 (2.37%) Azure Machine Learning
14 34 (2.18%) Amazon S3
15 32 (2.05%) Azure Databricks
16 30 (1.92%) Azure DevOps
17 28 (1.79%) GitHub
18 24 (1.54%) Microsoft Purview
19 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
1 154 (9.86%) Power BI
2 132 (8.45%) Data Warehouse
3 108 (6.91%) Data Lake
4 107 (6.85%) Tableau
5 68 (4.35%) Amazon Redshift
6 61 (3.91%) Big Data
7 59 (3.78%) Metadata
8 57 (3.65%) NoSQL
9 47 (3.01%) Looker
10 43 (2.75%) BigQuery
11 38 (2.43%) Relational Database
12 37 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
13 36 (2.30%) SQL Server
14 32 (2.05%) Azure SQL Database
14 32 (2.05%) Delta Lake
15 30 (1.92%) Elasticsearch
16 29 (1.86%) MongoDB
17 27 (1.73%) Data Mining
17 27 (1.73%) Hadoop
18 21 (1.34%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 95 (6.08%) Git
2 42 (2.69%) MLflow
3 31 (1.98%) Claude Code
4 14 (0.90%) JIRA
5 11 (0.70%) GitLab
6 9 (0.58%) Jenkins
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
1 420 (26.89%) Finance
2 325 (20.81%) Social Skills
3 312 (19.97%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.77%) Marketing
5 134 (8.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 133 (8.51%) Banking
7 92 (5.89%) Retail
8 87 (5.57%) Public Sector
9 81 (5.19%) Law
10 41 (2.62%) Legal
11 34 (2.18%) Advertising
11 34 (2.18%) Financial Institution
12 33 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
13 32 (2.05%) 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 14 (0.90%) Publishing
19 11 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 586 (37.52%) Data Scientist
2 386 (24.71%) Senior
3 319 (20.42%) Senior Data Scientist
4 227 (14.53%) Lead
5 190 (12.16%) Data Engineer
6 101 (6.47%) Lead Data Scientist
7 99 (6.34%) Software Engineer
8 78 (4.99%) Architect
9 73 (4.67%) Analyst
9 73 (4.67%) Developer
10 53 (3.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 47 (3.01%) Consultant
12 38 (2.43%) Data Analyst
13 36 (2.30%) Senior Data Engineer
14 35 (2.24%) Data Architect
14 35 (2.24%) Research Scientist
15 33 (2.11%) Machine Learning Scientist
16 30 (1.92%) Principal Data Scientist
17 29 (1.86%) Enterprise Architect
18 28 (1.79%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (8.71%) PyTorch
2 119 (7.62%) TensorFlow
3 92 (5.89%) scikit-learn
4 82 (5.25%) LangChain
5 75 (4.80%) Kafka
6 70 (4.48%) PySpark
7 65 (4.16%) Terraform
8 52 (3.33%) Pandas
9 47 (3.01%) LangGraph
10 34 (2.18%) Hugging Face
10 34 (2.18%) React
11 33 (2.11%) NumPy
12 32 (2.05%) LlamaIndex
13 26 (1.66%) REST
14 25 (1.60%) .NET
15 24 (1.54%) pgvector
16 22 (1.41%) SpaCy
17 21 (1.34%) Spring
18 20 (1.28%) FastAPI
19 19 (1.22%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 113 (7.23%) Cloud Native
2 100 (6.40%) Algorithms
3 95 (6.08%) AI Agents
4 52 (3.33%) Onboarding
5 51 (3.27%) Product Ownership
6 50 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
7 34 (2.18%) Hedge funds
8 32 (2.05%) Video\Live Streaming
9 31 (1.98%) Clustering
10 30 (1.92%) Data Structures
11 28 (1.79%) Public Cloud
12 25 (1.60%) Over-the-Top Content
13 24 (1.54%) Blog
14 21 (1.34%) e-Learning
14 21 (1.34%) Social Media
15 19 (1.22%) Management Information System
16 17 (1.09%) Credit Risk
17 16 (1.02%) Life Science
18 14 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
19 13 (0.83%) 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
1 801 (51.28%) AI
2 749 (47.95%) Machine Learning
3 627 (40.14%) Analytics
4 297 (19.01%) CI/CD
5 293 (18.76%) Decision-Making
6 281 (17.99%) Data Engineering
7 276 (17.67%) Software Engineering
8 261 (16.71%) Problem-Solving
9 260 (16.65%) Agile
10 249 (15.94%) Data Pipeline
11 245 (15.69%) Roadmaps
12 244 (15.62%) Business Intelligence
13 231 (14.79%) Mentoring
14 220 (14.08%) Generative AI
15 193 (12.36%) MLOps
16 187 (11.97%) Data Modelling
17 183 (11.72%) Actionable Insight
18 161 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
18 161 (10.31%) Visualisation
19 155 (9.92%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 689 (44.11%) Python
2 472 (30.22%) SQL
3 100 (6.40%) Java
4 61 (3.91%) C++
5 59 (3.78%) Scala
6 51 (3.27%) JavaScript
7 45 (2.88%) C#
8 42 (2.69%) R
9 30 (1.92%) Go
10 20 (1.28%) Bicep
10 20 (1.28%) C
11 19 (1.22%) TypeScript
12 14 (0.90%) VBA
13 11 (0.70%) Julia
14 10 (0.64%) Kotlin
14 10 (0.64%) PHP
15 8 (0.51%) Groovy
16 6 (0.38%) Ruby
17 5 (0.32%) Rust
18 4 (0.26%) Bash
Qualifications
1 330 (21.13%) Degree
2 167 (10.69%) Security Cleared
3 91 (5.83%) DV Cleared
4 84 (5.38%) Master's Degree
5 67 (4.29%) SC Cleared
6 63 (4.03%) PhD
7 49 (3.14%) 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
1 195 (12.48%) Data Quality
2 46 (2.94%) GDPR
3 38 (2.43%) QA
4 25 (1.60%) Accessibility
5 19 (1.22%) 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 88 (5.63%) Docker
2 3 (0.19%) Firmware
3 2 (0.13%) Active Directory
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 69 (4.42%) 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
1 234 (14.98%) Databricks
2 130 (8.32%) Microsoft
3 89 (5.70%) Google
4 35 (2.24%) Dell
5 25 (1.60%) OpenAI
6 19 (1.22%) Cloudera
6 19 (1.22%) Oracle
7 18 (1.15%) Informatica
7 18 (1.15%) Teradata
7 18 (1.15%) Typelevel
8 16 (1.02%) Denodo
9 12 (0.77%) Workday
10 11 (0.70%) SAP
11 10 (0.64%) LexisNexis
12 7 (0.45%) IBM
13 6 (0.38%) Foundry
13 6 (0.38%) HP
13 6 (0.38%) Salesforce
14 5 (0.32%) Alteryx
15 4 (0.26%) CA Agile Central