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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 130 100
Rank change year-on-year -29 -30 -33
Permanent jobs citing Data Science 915 1,166 2,002
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.44% 2.23% 2.88%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.80% 2.44% 3.24%
Number of salaries quoted 484 517 1,295
10th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £42,439
25th Percentile £54,688 £53,750 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £69,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +2.22% -3.57%
75th Percentile £90,000 £88,750 £87,500
90th Percentile £113,500 £115,000 £115,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £63,652 £57,500
% change year-on-year -5.74% +10.70% -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 50,903 47,795 61,750
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 80.21% 91.56% 88.84%
Number of salaries quoted 30,118 23,045 47,857
10th Percentile £28,697 £35,000 £30,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,326 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £56,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +6.19% -9.60%
75th Percentile £75,900 £80,000 £75,772
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £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 30 January 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 30 January 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 -14 866 £70,000 - 991
London +22 473 £80,939 +7.92% 430
UK excluding London -58 394 £60,000 -5.74% 814
Work from Home -37 290 £67,000 +3.08% 471
South East -16 155 £55,000 -12.00% 304
North of England -44 91 £61,418 -3.85% 152
North West +8 62 £62,500 -2.15% 78
South West +4 62 £60,000 -14.29% 100
Midlands -19 48 £58,750 +2.17% 90
East Midlands -5 27 £40,000 -51.52% 67
Yorkshire -55 25 £57,500 -10.16% 52
West Midlands -22 21 £65,500 +45.56% 22
East of England +16 18 £80,000 +37.93% 107
Wales +7 10 £40,000 -50.00% 27
Scotland -64 10 £100,000 +100.00% 45
North East -17 4 £62,500 - 24
Northern Ireland -17 1 £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 73 (7.98%) Apache Spark
2 35 (3.83%) Apache Airflow
3 26 (2.84%) SharePoint
4 18 (1.97%) Apache
5 13 (1.42%) Jupyter
6 6 (0.66%) IIS
6 6 (0.66%) SAS
7 5 (0.55%) Confluence
8 3 (0.33%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.22%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.22%) CMS
9 2 (0.22%) Luigi
10 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 70 (7.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.77%) Chatbot
3 5 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
4 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.22%) Stata
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Salesforce CRM
1 6 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.44%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.11%) Odoo
4 1 (0.11%) SAP PLM
4 1 (0.11%) Sprinklr
4 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 271 (29.62%) Azure
2 240 (26.23%) AWS
3 144 (15.74%) GCP
4 139 (15.19%) Power Platform
5 45 (4.92%) Snowflake
6 39 (4.26%) Azure AI
7 38 (4.15%) Azure Machine Learning
8 33 (3.61%) Amazon SageMaker
9 31 (3.39%) Azure Data Factory
9 31 (3.39%) Vertex AI
10 29 (3.17%) SaaS
11 26 (2.84%) Azure DevOps
11 26 (2.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 24 (2.62%) GitHub
13 22 (2.40%) dbt
13 22 (2.40%) Serverless
14 21 (2.30%) Microsoft 365
15 19 (2.08%) AWS Lambda
16 16 (1.75%) PowerApps
17 14 (1.53%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 31 (3.39%) Broadband
2 11 (1.20%) 4G
2 11 (1.20%) BGP
2 11 (1.20%) Cisco IOS
2 11 (1.20%) Ethernet VPN
2 11 (1.20%) IOS XR
2 11 (1.20%) MPLS
3 7 (0.77%) TCP/IP
4 5 (0.55%) Firewall
5 4 (0.44%) Bluetooth
5 4 (0.44%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.44%) Modbus
5 4 (0.44%) Network Security
5 4 (0.44%) VLAN
5 4 (0.44%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.44%) ZigBee
6 3 (0.33%) HTTP
6 3 (0.33%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.33%) MQTT
7 2 (0.22%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (14.43%) Power BI
2 112 (12.24%) Data Warehouse
3 103 (11.26%) Tableau
4 79 (8.63%) Data Lake
5 45 (4.92%) Big Data
6 44 (4.81%) Metadata
6 44 (4.81%) NoSQL
7 36 (3.93%) SQL Server
8 35 (3.83%) Amazon Redshift
8 35 (3.83%) BigQuery
9 30 (3.28%) Hadoop
10 28 (3.06%) Data Mining
11 25 (2.73%) Elasticsearch
11 25 (2.73%) MongoDB
12 22 (2.40%) Delta Lake
12 22 (2.40%) DynamoDB
12 22 (2.40%) MySQL
12 22 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
13 20 (2.19%) Relational Database
14 16 (1.75%) Looker
Development Applications
1 60 (6.56%) Git
2 34 (3.72%) MLflow
3 16 (1.75%) ERwin
4 14 (1.53%) GitLab
5 8 (0.87%) JIRA
6 7 (0.77%) PowerDesigner
7 5 (0.55%) Burp Suite
8 4 (0.44%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.44%) Metasploit
9 3 (0.33%) Selenium
10 1 (0.11%) Jenkins
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MSBuild
10 1 (0.11%) TeamCity
10 1 (0.11%) TestNG
10 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 328 (35.85%) Finance
2 276 (30.16%) Social Skills
3 201 (21.97%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (9.95%) Banking
5 87 (9.51%) Marketing
6 82 (8.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 69 (7.54%) Pharmaceutical
8 59 (6.45%) Retail
9 48 (5.25%) Financial Institution
10 41 (4.48%) Law
11 33 (3.61%) Manufacturing
12 24 (2.62%) Legal
12 24 (2.62%) Public Sector
13 22 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
14 15 (1.64%) Telecoms
15 12 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (1.20%) Advertising
16 11 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
16 11 (1.20%) Publishing
17 9 (0.98%) Games
Job Titles
1 197 (21.53%) Senior
2 184 (20.11%) Data Scientist
3 146 (15.96%) Lead
4 137 (14.97%) Data Engineer
5 87 (9.51%) Analyst
6 73 (7.98%) Senior Data Scientist
7 68 (7.43%) Data Analyst
8 60 (6.56%) Developer
9 46 (5.03%) Software Engineer
10 44 (4.81%) Consultant
11 42 (4.59%) Senior Data Engineer
12 30 (3.28%) Architect
13 23 (2.51%) Data Architect
14 19 (2.08%) Data Consultant
14 19 (2.08%) Senior Analyst
14 19 (2.08%) Senior Developer
15 18 (1.97%) Python Engineer
15 18 (1.97%) Senior Consultant
16 17 (1.86%) Data Science Engineer
16 17 (1.86%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (8.85%) PyTorch
2 69 (7.54%) TensorFlow
3 45 (4.92%) PySpark
4 44 (4.81%) scikit-learn
5 38 (4.15%) React
6 36 (3.93%) Pandas
7 32 (3.50%) LangChain
8 23 (2.51%) RESTful
9 19 (2.08%) Kafka
9 19 (2.08%) NumPy
10 17 (1.86%) HTML
11 15 (1.64%) FastAPI
12 14 (1.53%) Hugging Face
13 13 (1.42%) CSS
14 12 (1.31%) Django
14 12 (1.31%) gRPC
14 12 (1.31%) REST
15 11 (1.20%) Jinja
15 11 (1.20%) NETCONF
15 11 (1.20%) YANG
Miscellaneous
1 95 (10.38%) Life Science
2 86 (9.40%) Algorithms
3 53 (5.79%) Product Ownership
4 44 (4.81%) Distributed Systems
4 44 (4.81%) Self-Motivation
5 35 (3.83%) Management Information System
6 28 (3.06%) Cloud Native
7 24 (2.62%) Data Structures
8 22 (2.40%) Onboarding
9 21 (2.30%) Pharmacovigilance
10 17 (1.86%) Video\Live Streaming
11 16 (1.75%) AI Agents
12 14 (1.53%) Reinsurance
13 13 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (1.42%) Omics
14 12 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
14 12 (1.31%) Over-the-Top Content
14 12 (1.31%) Social Media
15 11 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 11 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 10 (1.09%) Linux
2 6 (0.66%) Unix
3 4 (0.44%) Android
3 4 (0.44%) Kali Linux
3 4 (0.44%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.22%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 477 (52.13%) AI
2 467 (51.04%) Analytics
3 465 (50.82%) Machine Learning
4 238 (26.01%) Problem-Solving
5 226 (24.70%) Computer Science
6 223 (24.37%) Agile
7 200 (21.86%) Decision-Making
8 194 (21.20%) Business Intelligence
9 174 (19.02%) Data Engineering
10 162 (17.70%) Data Modelling
11 161 (17.60%) CI/CD
12 160 (17.49%) Data Pipeline
13 152 (16.61%) Data Analysis
14 148 (16.17%) Data Governance
15 144 (15.74%) Visualisation
16 143 (15.63%) Statistics
17 140 (15.30%) ETL
18 132 (14.43%) Roadmaps
19 129 (14.10%) Mathematics
20 128 (13.99%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 519 (56.72%) Python
2 299 (32.68%) SQL
3 69 (7.54%) R
4 59 (6.45%) Java
5 55 (6.01%) Scala
6 23 (2.51%) JavaScript
7 22 (2.40%) Go
8 19 (2.08%) TypeScript
9 18 (1.97%) VBA
10 16 (1.75%) C#
11 13 (1.42%) C++
12 11 (1.20%) MATLAB
12 11 (1.20%) Rust
13 8 (0.87%) ANSI SQL
13 8 (0.87%) Bash
13 8 (0.87%) Bicep
13 8 (0.87%) PHP
14 5 (0.55%) C
14 5 (0.55%) PowerShell
15 4 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 361 (39.45%) Degree
2 164 (17.92%) Master's Degree
3 97 (10.60%) PhD
4 93 (10.16%) Security Cleared
5 88 (9.62%) Computer Science Degree
6 70 (7.65%) SC Cleared
7 40 (4.37%) Numerate Degree
8 27 (2.95%) DV Cleared
9 21 (2.30%) MBA
10 17 (1.86%) DBS Check
11 11 (1.20%) Azure Certification
12 10 (1.09%) APMP
12 10 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
13 9 (0.98%) AWS Certification
14 8 (0.87%) PMI Certification
15 7 (0.77%) PMP
16 6 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
17 3 (0.33%) CFA
17 3 (0.33%) SAP Certification
18 2 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 151 (16.50%) Data Quality
2 52 (5.68%) GDPR
3 43 (4.70%) GxP
4 36 (3.93%) Accessibility
5 24 (2.62%) QA
6 22 (2.40%) EU AI Act
6 22 (2.40%) Solvency II
7 21 (2.30%) HIPAA
7 21 (2.30%) PSD2
8 10 (1.09%) CDISC
8 10 (1.09%) HL7
9 7 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 6 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.33%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 3 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.33%) NIST
11 3 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
12 2 (0.22%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.11%) GAAP
System Software
1 74 (8.09%) Docker
2 3 (0.33%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 49 (5.36%) Kubernetes
2 27 (2.95%) Terraform
3 7 (0.77%) Ansible
4 5 (0.55%) Kubeflow
5 4 (0.44%) Nessus
5 4 (0.44%) Nmap
6 2 (0.22%) Argo
6 2 (0.22%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.22%) Puppet
7 1 (0.11%) Nagios
Vendors
1 119 (13.01%) Databricks
2 83 (9.07%) Microsoft
3 67 (7.32%) Google
4 31 (3.39%) Alteryx
4 31 (3.39%) Bloomberg
5 28 (3.06%) Salesforce
6 27 (2.95%) Oracle
7 26 (2.84%) OpenAI
8 22 (2.40%) Cisco
9 17 (1.86%) SAP
10 16 (1.75%) Informatica
11 13 (1.42%) Palantir
12 12 (1.31%) Talend
13 9 (0.98%) Foundry
13 9 (0.98%) Typelevel
14 5 (0.55%) BT
14 5 (0.55%) Red Hat
15 4 (0.44%) Fortinet
15 4 (0.44%) IBM
15 4 (0.44%) Splunk