IT Director vs Chief Data Officer: Salary & Career Benchmarks in the UK

In the UK, Chief Data Officer roles typically command a higher median salary than IT Director positions. According to our 2026 live benchmark data, a mid-level Chief Data Officer earns a median salary of £143K, whereas a IT Director brings in roughly £113K (a gap of £30K at the median).

Seniority, tech stack, and location all move this gap. Senior practitioners in either discipline can exceed the upper range through specialist skills. See the skills premium section below for the specific certifications and tools that push offers to the top of the range.

While both positions are vital to a modern tech organisation, IT Director and Chief Data Officer have fundamentally different daily workflows.

IT Director focuses primarily on holding executive accountability for the full technology function, setting IT strategy and multi-year roadmap, leading IT leadership teams, and ensuring technology enables business objectives. Day-to-day work revolves around setting IT strategy and multi-year technology roadmap, leading the IT leadership team across infrastructure, applications, support, security, and projects, managing IT operating budget and capital investment, presenting IT strategy and performance to the board, overseeing technology transformation programmes, managing strategic vendor relationships, ensuring cybersecurity and compliance posture, and driving digital transformation initiatives.

Chief Data Officer focuses on setting enterprise data strategy, governing data as a strategic asset, leading data platform and analytics capability, and ensuring GDPR and AI Act compliance at board level. Their time is spent setting enterprise data strategy and presenting to the board, governing data quality and master data management frameworks, overseeing data platform and analytics engineering teams, managing GDPR and data compliance programmes, building executive buy-in for data investments, partnering with the CISO on data security, and driving AI and analytics adoption.

Transitioning between these two paths is achievable but requires targeted upskilling.

Moving from IT Director to Chief Data Officer: Head of Data, Director of Analytics, Data Engineering Directors, and senior enterprise architects with data specialisation most commonly transition into CDO roles.

Moving from Chief Data Officer to IT Director: Heads of IT, Heads of Infrastructure, or Heads of Engineering who develop board-level engagement and full IT function accountability, and senior IT consultants moving into direct leadership roles.

Neither path requires starting from scratch. Professionals in both roles share underlying technology fluency; the gap is usually domain knowledge and specific tooling rather than core engineering fundamentals.

In the UK in 2026, both roles are seeing demand, but with different drivers.

IT Director demand is high, particularly in Telecoms and utilities transformation leadership, led by employers such as HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group. Chief Data Officer demand is very high, concentrated in Insurance and asset management modelling teams, led by employers such as HSBC and Barclays.

Workspace flexibility significantly impacts total compensation value in the UK.

IT Director roles score 55% on our remote-friendliness index (Hybrid). This is because Strategic planning, vendor management, and team leadership can be performed effectively in hybrid arrangements. Most IT Directors operate 3 to 4 days per week on-site, which is why remote and hybrid listings remain common among UK scale-ups and remote-first employers. Where in-office attendance is required, it is typically driven by Board engagement, executive team participation, major incident management, and senior stakeholder relationships require regular in-person presence at the organisation's primary location, with UK-headquartered enterprises more likely than scale-ups to formalise this into a fixed office schedule.

Chief Data Officer roles score 55% (Hybrid). Strategic planning, team leadership, and stakeholder management can be conducted remotely. CDOs are typically in executive communities with distributed leadership teams, which is why remote and hybrid listings remain common among UK scale-ups and remote-first employers is the primary driver of flexibility. When office days are required, it is usually for Board and executive committee attendance, building organisational trust and cultural change around data, and leading large-scale data governance programmes are most effective with regular presence, with UK-headquartered enterprises more likely than scale-ups to formalise this into a fixed office schedule.