picked.ai/hire/data-scientist
Hire a data scientist
How to hire a
data scientist.
Salary bands, time-to-fill, what good actually looks like, and the assessment we put every candidate through. Built on nine years of validated psychometric data from Neuroworx.
Post this role
~30 seconds
Title, level, three must-haves. We syndicate, screen, score, and shortlist. First 50 candidates free.
Post this role for free →
£115,000
Median salary · United Kingdom
£95-£135k senior range
42d
Typical time-to-fill
down to 4.4d with Picked
198
Applicants per role
Series A · public posting
9 / 198
Make it to interview
industry · pre-AI screening
Salary bands
What it costs to hire one.
2026 H1 · base + variable
LevelUSUKEURemote
IC1 / Junior$83-$115k£52-£72k€56-€77k$69-$95k
IC2 / Data scientist$115-$157k£72-£98k€77-€105k$95-$129k
IC3 / Senior DS$152-$216k£95-£135k€102-€144k$125-$178k
IC4 / Staff DS$200-$272k£125-£170k€134-€182k$165-$224k
IC5 / Principal DS$256-$352k£160-£220k€171-€235k$211-$290k
Source · 2,847 anonymised offers placed via Picked Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Updated monthly.
What good looks like
Past credentials. Present signals.
01
Modelling judgement
Knows when not to build a model. Reaches for the baseline before the gradient-boosted thing.
02
Communication of uncertainty
Names the confidence interval out loud, in words the PM hears. Will not let a point estimate ship alone.
03
Evaluation honesty
Picks the metric before they see the result. Has thrown out a model that beat the baseline on the wrong loss.
04
Cross-team comms
Writes a paragraph that engineering, product, and the CFO can all act on. Picks the one chart that holds the answer.
05
Curiosity
Has a side investigation. Reads outside their stack. Asks one good question per review.
Nine years of Neuroworx outcome data on 14,000 data scientist hires says: the candidates rated high on modelling judgement + evaluation honesty outperform high-prestige-CV candidates by a wide margin in the first twelve months.
Read the paper →
What Picked puts every candidate through
Four stages. Each one written down.
From the Neuroworx item bank · 1,247 items live
01
Triage
CV + cover screened against must-haves. Title, level, language, region, three skills you set. Hard filters first. The model spends no time on people you would not even read.
~12 seconds · $0.12
02
Conversational screen
A 12-minute voice or chat conversation against six structured probes: motivation, scope of last role, the thing they are proudest of, biggest production mistake, what they would build with a free month, why this role.
~12 min · $0.31
03
Role-fit assessment
A scoped task drawn from the bank. Submit a short writeup. Scored against a published rubric on judgement, craft, and pragmatism.
30-60 min · $0.28
04
AI first-round interview
A 20-minute voice interview against six items drawn from the IC3 item bank. Includes behavioural ("tell me about a time"), technical or scenario ("walk me through how you would approach"), and an ownership probe.
~20 min · $0.24
The 1,247 items for data scientist are split across 42 sub-rubrics. Every item has been calibrated against twelve-month performance outcomes from 14,083 prior hires.
See sample items ↗
Sample interview questions
A few from the item bank.
01
Walk me through the last model you shipped end-to-end. From problem framing to monitoring.
Listen for: A specific problem, a specific baseline, the post-launch behaviour. How they knew it was working.
02
Tell me about a project where you decided not to build a model.
Listen for: A specific project. The moment in EDA when the answer became obvious. The conversation with the sponsor.
03
What baseline did you beat on your last project, and by how much?
Listen for: A specific baseline. A specific delta. Honesty about whether the delta was worth the complexity.
04
Tell me about an EDA that killed a project.
Listen for: A specific finding. The early signal that mattered. The sponsor conversation.
05
Describe the last time you had to communicate uncertainty to a non-analyst.
Listen for: A specific stakeholder. The words they actually used. Whether the stakeholder changed their decision.
See all 30 questions →
Job description template
Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.
data-scientist.md
226 words · 3 min read
# [Senior/Mid/Junior] data scientist · [city] or remote

We are hiring our [Nth] data scientist. You will own a model from problem framing to production monitoring. The first project is [the model, the surface]. The team is [N] scientists, [N] engineers, [N] PMs. [How we ship].

## You will be good here if

- You have shut a project down after the EDA because the answer was already there.
- You pick the metric before you see the result.
- [The third trait you actually care about].

## What you will not get

A pure notebook job. You will own the deployed model and the on-call that comes with it. We do not separate ML research from production.

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent equity. We post the band because we mean it.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen + assessment via Picked, 20-min interview via Picked, one on-site half-day with the team plus a live modelling design discussion. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Modelling judgement, communication of uncertainty, evaluation honesty, cross-team comms, curiosity. Not the count of frameworks on your CV.

That is the JD. Apply via [link] or just send a paragraph about the last project where you decided not to build a model.

[Your name], [your title]
Full JD template page →
Hire a data scientist.
By Friday.
Post this role for freeSee a real dashboard →
$0.99 per AI-vetted candidate. First 50 free.
Hire data scientists · Picked.ai