The United Kingdom is a great place to work if you want to be employed as a data scientist.
There isn’t a shortage of exciting job opportunities and some of the best-known AI firms in the
world are British. Deepmind, Benevolent AI, Oxbotica, FiveAI, the Alan Turning Institute
are some of the most renowned names in the field that are domiciled in the UK.
In this video, we’ll try to delineate the typical profile of the UK data scientist,
based on our findings from our research on 303 LinkedIn profiles. We’ll define the
following: • Which is the programming language preferred
by data scientists in the UK? • How many years of working experience they
have on average? • Which is the industry they work in…
• and what is their academic degree. But before we do that, let’s talk a bit
more about how you can get a data science job in the UK, shall we?
There are an estimated 1 million data science and analytics professionals in the UK as of
2020. So, we can firmly state that’s definitely a popular career path in Britain.
So, how can you start your job search? Finding a job through recruiters is a common
practice in the UK. However, if you don’t have any prior experience or if you are a
relatively junior candidate, you might have to rely on applications through company websites
and job boards. If you’re wondering where to start, make sure you visit some of the
most popular job board websites in the UK, such as reed.co.uk, monster.uk, totaljobs,
Indeed, and Adzuna. No matter if you choose recruiter services
or you do your own search, if you are not a British citizen, make sure you visit the
gov.uk. website where you can get familiar with the post-Brexit requirements and types
of work visas you need to work in the UK. With that out of the way, let’s discuss
remuneration. According to Glassdoor, the typical data scientist
salary in the UK is 45,000 pounds. That’s based on a sample of 822 salaries but keep
in mind that the reported salaries range is quite wide – between 30 and 70,000 pounds
per year. A careful look on Glassdoor would allow you to see that large tech companies
tend to pay a much higher compensation compared to other firms offering jobs in the field.
What about education? What are the best universities offering data science degrees?
The United Kingdom is one of the leading destinations for people who want to earn a data science
and analytics degree. According to Forbes’ columnist Bernard Marr, the Imperial College
in London with its Master’s in Business Analytics and the University of Bath’s Master’s
in Data Science can be ranked in the top 10 in the world in terms of best Master’s in
Data Science programs. Here’s a short list of some other highly
reputed UK universities offering analytics and data science degrees:
• The University of Edinburgh • the King's College of London
• the University of Manchester • the University of Bristol
• the University of Glasgow • and the University of Birmingham
Something important to take note of is that the Master’s programs in these universities
start from 22,500 pounds and go up to 35,600 pounds in the Imperial College in London…
and that may not be within everyone’s price range
In addition, one of the admission criteria for International students is a Proof of English
Proficiency, typically measured with TOEFL and IELTS exams.
Another intriguing fact is that if you want to become a data scientist in the UK, chances
are you need a Master's or a Ph.D. qualification. You can have a Bachelor's degree and work
as a data scientist, but, according to our data, there are fewer people who are able
to do that (only 9%) compared to 52% with a Master's and 34% with a Ph.D. degree.
Very interesting stuff, right? Now, let’s try to delineate the typical
data scientist profile in the UK as we said we will do in the beginning of the video.
In terms of programming languages preferred by UK data scientists, similarly to what we
see in most other countries, Python is in the lead. The second place is held by R, and
SQL comes in third. According to the data, there are much fewer UK data scientists using
Java.
And if you’re looking for one single and affordable place to master Python, R, and
SQL together with all the other in-demand skills you need to become a data scientist,
we’ve got you covered. We developed the ‘3-6-5 Data Science Program’ to help people
of all backgrounds enter the field of data science. We have trained more than 900,000
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offer on all of our plans. Alright.
It’s time to talk about years on the job. The most pressing question being, “Do you
have to be a seasoned veteran to be a data scientist in the UK?”
Not exactly. 11% of the profiles we studied had between 0 and 12 months of work experience
on the job. Another 20% of professionals became data scientists less than 2 years ago. And
then another 29% listed between 2 and 3 years of experience. This goes to show that people
employed as data scientists didn’t have decades of experience and a significant number
started in their current position relatively soon.
Now that you know what you need to become a data scientist, let’s explore the cities
and industries in the UK with the best career opportunities.
A simple comparison on indeed.co.uk shows what we already knew – London offers by
far the most data scientist job opportunities in the UK. The difference with other major
cities is significant. When we searched, we saw 811 job openings in London, 45 in Manchester,
26 in Birmingham, 18 in Leeds, and only 12 in Glasgow. So, that’s something you should
bear in mind – if you want to be a data scientist – the number of opportunities
London offers is significantly higher. London is one of the most important financial
centres in the world, but when it comes to top industries for data science, our numbers
showed that most people employed as data scientists in the UK work in Technology and IT – a
whole 60%!. Compared to that number, there are fewer data scientists employed in Finance
- a modest 16%. Still, the field is rapidly evolving. Perhaps the finance industry hasn’t
caught up to the opportunities data science can offer and over time the relative percentage
of finance-employed data scientists will increase to remedy that.
Now you know what it takes to become a data scientist in the UK, how to begin your job
search, and which cities and industries provide the best chances of landing your dream job.
And remember – even the greatest was once a beginner, so don’t be afraid to take the
first step.If you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to hit the “like” button and share
it with your friends. And if you’d like to become an expert in all things data science,
subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching and good luck!