UK Data Science & Analytics Job Market in 2019

Based on the public interest, media coverage and the general interest in the topic, data science is still on the rise. Google Trends is an excellent tool to analyse the fever curve of the public interest. The screenshot below shows the Google search traffic in the UK for Data Science and Machine Learning over the last 5 years. After years  with a strong rise in interest, the curve has flattened - but is still increasing. We analyze in this blog post the job market dynamics based on job openings from Indeed to get a better understanding of what employers are looking for. 

Data overview 

We use job openings from Indeed's job search site using a python script based on the Indeed API. We run the following search queries based on existing trends in Data Science today:

• Data Scientist
• Data Analytics
• Data Engineer
• Big Data
• Machine Learning
• Neural and Data Science
• Deep Learning and Data Science
• Python and Data Science
• Researcher and Data Science
• R and Data Science
• Mathematics and Data Science
• Statistic and Data Science.
  
  

Python and Data Analytics in high demand

We obtained 1316 job openings from UK employers at the moment of writing. Their distribution in the selected directions is shown below.

As we can see, Python is the leading trend in job offers in the UK. This is because almost every data-related role requires knowledge of Python. It has become the must-have language for data scientists / data analysts.

A large number of requests have a query for 'Data Science', which is not surprising since this direction is general and can include all the others.

The smallest request numbers belong to the 'Deep Learning' and 'Math' and 'Neural' categories. This is due to their complexity, and the fact that most employers do not include these directions in separate categories. We explain this feature in more detail below.

Note that the R, Statistic, and Researcher directions have a good query rating since universities and research institutions are one of the main employers in the sphere of Data Science (in the UK). Also, many large companies conduct their own research programs.

Geographic overview: Which places offer the most jobs?

The distribution of requests for the UK states shows that most of the requests are concentrated in England (91%), while other states account only for 14% (Wales 2% and Scotland 8%). Note that there are no job offers for Data Science vacancies for Northern Ireland - which might be related to the way Indeed assigns jobs to regions.

The same situation remains for the regions – most of the job offers are in those regions where there are large IT-companies, business, production. Not surprisingly, London accounts for more than 50% of the job openings.   

Among them, we can highlight:

• London – 55%
• Eastern – 12%
• Scotland –8%
• South East – 6%
• South West – 5%
• North West – 5%.

The most popular UK cities for Data Science job offers are London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Manchester. So apart from London, when compared to the overall population the two university cities Oxford and Cambridge definitely stand out.

Which employers offer the most jobs?

The chart below shows the leading employers. Companies with less than 5 job offers are included in the “other” position.

Among the top employers, we can highlight:

• Harnham
• University of Edinburgh
• Arup
• GSK
• Source Code Personnel
• Expedia Group
• University of Oxford.

It is necessary to say that Harnham is a recruitment agency specialized in data-related jobs. 

As we see, many employers are universities, research institutions. 

Overview of junior vs. senior roles

Junior and Senior positions usually differ in the following criteria:

• Experience
• Hard-skills
• Level of solving tasks
• Soft-skills (responsibility, communicability).

Let's look at the employers' offers distribution according to these positions. We’ll present graphs that show the distribution of the roles of the Junior and Senior positions.

As you can see, most Data Science vacancies in the UK require a Senior level. Senior positions are opened slightly longer, and their number is larger than for other levels. Also, Senior positions are more actual in England and large regions.

Conclusion

Summing up, we can see that the Data Science job market in the UK covers all the main trends. A large number of offerings is from scientific and research institutions, which explains the popularity of Mathematics, Statistics, and R directions. England and large cities, where large IT-companies are concentrated, usually offer more Data Science vacancies. Comparison of the Junior and Senior positions shows that there are more job offers for Seniors, but at the same time, they remain open longer.