Data Scientist Contracts

Data Scientist
UK

The median Data Scientist daily rate in the UK is £550 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 427 546 532
Rank change year-on-year +119 -14 -111
Contract jobs requiring a Data Scientist 144 141 337
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.34% 0.25% 0.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.36% 0.26% 0.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 104 88 226
10th Percentile £370 £242 £410
25th Percentile £463 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% +5.50%
75th Percentile £602 £675 £629
90th Percentile £680 £733 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £525 £534
% change year-on-year +2.38% -1.64% +4.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 11 14
10th Percentile £15.63 - £21.37
25th Percentile £19.31 £19.00 £32.53
Median hourly rate £31.75 £19.49 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year +62.90% -58.31% +5.89%
75th Percentile £44.69 £52.74 £61.16
90th Percentile £47.88 £56.40 £70.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.81 £19.49 £19.91
% change year-on-year -18.88% -2.11% -54.04%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 39,507 53,867 83,506
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.79% 94.60% 95.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,718 37,620 58,687
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £544 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.40% +3.52% +9.38%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,672 1,498 2,036
10th Percentile £12.82 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.29 £19.13 £15.75
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +88.21% +6.27%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%

Data Scientist
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Data Scientist in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Data Scientist.

Daily rate trend for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Scientist over the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Data Scientist.

Hourly rate trend for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Scientist over the 6 months to 18 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Scientist in the UK

Data Scientist
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Scientist within the UK over the 6 months to 18 May 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +109 126 £550 - 179
London +133 92 £550 - 110
Work from Home +103 65 £546 +3.95% 74
UK excluding London +31 34 £538 +2.38% 97
North of England +30 11 £554 -16.38% 18
Yorkshire +14 8 £557 -17.48% 8
Wales +23 7 £396 - 5
South East +24 4 £600 +306.78% 37
East of England +2 4 £538 +10.26% 4
Scotland +40 3 £488 +30.00% 3
South West -5 3 £538 -1.60% 19
West Midlands +20 2 £590 +18.00% 5
North West +18 2 £520 +9.47% 7
Midlands +16 2 £590 -1.67% 10
North East - 1 - - 3

Data Scientist Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 May 2024, Data Scientist contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Data Scientist in the job title.

1 143 (99.31%) Data Science
2 124 (86.11%) Python
3 74 (51.39%) Machine Learning
4 65 (45.14%) Visualisation
5 61 (42.36%) Data Analysis
6 59 (40.97%) SQL
7 49 (34.03%) Algorithms
8 47 (32.64%) Analytical Skills
9 40 (27.78%) R
10 39 (27.08%) Data Visualisation
10 39 (27.08%) Statistics
11 36 (25.00%) Mathematics
12 35 (24.31%) Business Intelligence
13 34 (23.61%) Data Modelling
13 34 (23.61%) Degree
13 34 (23.61%) Analytics
13 34 (23.61%) Power Platform
13 34 (23.61%) Power BI
14 33 (22.92%) Social Skills
15 31 (21.53%) Tableau
16 30 (20.83%) Predictive Modelling
17 27 (18.75%) Computer Science
18 25 (17.36%) Artificial Intelligence
19 24 (16.67%) Security Cleared
20 23 (15.97%) Azure
20 23 (15.97%) Finance
21 21 (14.58%) Decision-Making
22 20 (13.89%) Data Pipeline
23 19 (13.19%) scikit-learn
23 19 (13.19%) Agile

Data Scientist Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (4.86%) Jupyter
2 5 (3.47%) Apache Spark
2 5 (3.47%) SAS
3 3 (2.08%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.69%) Apache
4 1 (0.69%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (2.78%) SPSS
Cloud Services
1 34 (23.61%) Power Platform
2 23 (15.97%) Azure
3 14 (9.72%) GCP
4 9 (6.25%) AWS
5 4 (2.78%) Azure Machine Learning
5 4 (2.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 3 (2.08%) Amazon SageMaker
6 3 (2.08%) Azure Data Factory
6 3 (2.08%) Snowflake
7 2 (1.39%) Azure Cognitive Search
7 2 (1.39%) Azure Cognitive Services
7 2 (1.39%) Dagster
7 2 (1.39%) Vertex AI
8 1 (0.69%) Amazon ECS
8 1 (0.69%) AWS Lambda
8 1 (0.69%) AWS Step Functions
8 1 (0.69%) Azure DevOps
8 1 (0.69%) dbt
8 1 (0.69%) PowerApps
8 1 (0.69%) Serverless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (23.61%) Power BI
2 31 (21.53%) Tableau
3 17 (11.81%) Big Data
4 13 (9.03%) Hadoop
5 12 (8.33%) BusinessObjects
6 10 (6.94%) Data Mining
7 7 (4.86%) BigQuery
8 5 (3.47%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (2.78%) Looker
10 3 (2.08%) MySQL
10 3 (2.08%) Qlik Sense
10 3 (2.08%) Relational Database
11 1 (0.69%) Amazon QuickSight
11 1 (0.69%) NoSQL
11 1 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
11 1 (0.69%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 14 (9.72%) Git
2 2 (1.39%) JIRA
2 2 (1.39%) Visual Studio
3 1 (0.69%) Jenkins
General
1 47 (32.64%) Analytical Skills
2 33 (22.92%) Social Skills
3 23 (15.97%) Finance
4 13 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 11 (7.64%) Marketing
6 7 (4.86%) Retail
7 6 (4.17%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (2.08%) Police
8 3 (2.08%) Telecoms
9 2 (1.39%) Banking
9 2 (1.39%) Czech Language
10 1 (0.69%) Advertising
10 1 (0.69%) Games
10 1 (0.69%) Hungarian Language
10 1 (0.69%) Law
10 1 (0.69%) Legal
10 1 (0.69%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (13.19%) scikit-learn
2 16 (11.11%) Pandas
3 14 (9.72%) PySpark
4 13 (9.03%) TensorFlow
5 8 (5.56%) PyTorch
6 7 (4.86%) NumPy
7 5 (3.47%) Matplotlib
7 5 (3.47%) Plotly
8 4 (2.78%) Shiny
8 4 (2.78%) XGBoost
9 3 (2.08%) AngularJS
9 3 (2.08%) CSS
9 3 (2.08%) ggplot2
9 3 (2.08%) HTML
10 2 (1.39%) JSON
10 2 (1.39%) REST
10 2 (1.39%) SciPy
10 2 (1.39%) Swagger
10 2 (1.39%) YAML
11 1 (0.69%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 49 (34.03%) Algorithms
2 7 (4.86%) Analytical Mindset
2 7 (4.86%) Data Structures
3 4 (2.78%) Management Information System
3 4 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
4 3 (2.08%) Credit Risk
5 2 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (1.39%) Multi-touch
5 2 (1.39%) Social Media
6 1 (0.69%) FMCG
6 1 (0.69%) Marketing Technology
6 1 (0.69%) Mobile App
6 1 (0.69%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.69%) Reinsurance
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (99.31%) Data Science
2 74 (51.39%) Machine Learning
3 65 (45.14%) Visualisation
4 61 (42.36%) Data Analysis
5 39 (27.08%) Data Visualisation
5 39 (27.08%) Statistics
6 36 (25.00%) Mathematics
7 35 (24.31%) Business Intelligence
8 34 (23.61%) Analytics
8 34 (23.61%) Data Modelling
9 30 (20.83%) Predictive Modelling
10 27 (18.75%) Computer Science
11 25 (17.36%) Artificial Intelligence
12 21 (14.58%) Decision-Making
13 20 (13.89%) Data Pipeline
14 19 (13.19%) Agile
15 18 (12.50%) Statistical Modelling
16 17 (11.81%) Actionable Insight
17 14 (9.72%) Natural Language Processing
17 14 (9.72%) Prototyping
Programming Languages
1 124 (86.11%) Python
2 59 (40.97%) SQL
3 40 (27.78%) R
4 3 (2.08%) Bash
4 3 (2.08%) JavaScript
5 2 (1.39%) C#
6 1 (0.69%) C++
6 1 (0.69%) MATLAB
6 1 (0.69%) Scala
6 1 (0.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 34 (23.61%) Degree
2 24 (16.67%) Security Cleared
3 19 (13.19%) SC Cleared
4 17 (11.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (6.94%) PhD
6 9 (6.25%) Master's Degree
7 3 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (2.08%) Numerate Degree
7 3 (2.08%) PMI Certification
7 3 (2.08%) PMP
8 2 (1.39%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.69%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.86%) Data Quality
2 1 (0.69%) Accessibility
2 1 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
2 1 (0.69%) QA
System Software
1 8 (5.56%) Docker
Systems Management
1 2 (1.39%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 10 (6.94%) Databricks
2 8 (5.56%) ServiceNow
3 7 (4.86%) Google
3 7 (4.86%) Microsoft
4 6 (4.17%) Alteryx
5 3 (2.08%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.69%) Adobe
6 1 (0.69%) Cloudera
6 1 (0.69%) Oracle