Thought Leadership Job Trends

Thought Leadership
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Thought Leadership skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 388 306
Rank change year-on-year +98 -82 -70
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 482 308 739
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.66% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.87% 0.71% 1.07%
Number of salaries quoted 164 112 494
10th Percentile £45,075 £54,000 £44,004
25th Percentile £61,250 £72,500 £63,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £90,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +12.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £119,588 £121,125 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £89,500 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.79% +12.39% -0.46%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Thought Leadership falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 55,161 43,489 68,939
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.71% 93.04% 88.07%
Number of salaries quoted 33,069 21,992 52,917
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,000 £29,440
25th Percentile £38,750 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.09%

Thought Leadership
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Thought Leadership relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Thought Leadership job vacancy trend in the UK

Thought Leadership
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Thought Leadership.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Thought Leadership over the 6 months to 1 March 2026.

Salary histogram for Thought Leadership in the UK

Thought Leadership
Top 16 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Thought Leadership within the UK over the 6 months to 1 March 2026. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +116 410 £80,000 -7.51% 624
London +89 261 £86,500 -3.89% 206
UK excluding London +28 156 £70,000 -21.79% 550
Work from Home +27 92 £78,750 -6.62% 203
South East +5 46 £62,500 -12.28% 210
North of England -14 41 £75,000 - 99
North West +7 34 £70,000 -19.08% 45
East of England +22 31 £60,100 -32.85% 61
Scotland -22 17 £80,000 -20.00% 16
South West -8 10 £53,750 -31.75% 74
Midlands -7 9 £75,000 - 65
West Midlands +13 6 £75,000 - 21
Yorkshire -38 5 £90,000 +44.00% 39
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 42
North East -8 2 - - 15
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 10

Thought Leadership
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 8 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.24%) CMS
3 5 (1.04%) IIS
3 5 (1.04%) WordPress
4 2 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.41%) Confluence
4 2 (0.41%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.21%) CICS
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.21%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 9 (1.87%) Maya
3 8 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (1.04%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 5 (1.04%) Adobe XD
5 5 (1.04%) InVision
5 5 (1.04%) Sketch
6 4 (0.83%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.62%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.62%) Elementor
8 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.21%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 14 (2.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.66%) Endur
4 4 (0.83%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.62%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.41%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.41%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.41%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.21%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 73 (15.15%) AWS
2 55 (11.41%) Azure
3 43 (8.92%) SaaS
4 28 (5.81%) GCP
5 27 (5.60%) Snowflake
6 12 (2.49%) GitHub
7 11 (2.28%) Power Platform
8 10 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
8 10 (2.07%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (1.87%) Cloud Computing
10 8 (1.66%) dbt
11 6 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.24%) Matillion
11 6 (1.24%) Microsoft Copilot
11 6 (1.24%) OCI
11 6 (1.24%) SuccessFactors
12 5 (1.04%) Figma
12 5 (1.04%) Google Ads
13 4 (0.83%) Azure Machine Learning
13 4 (0.83%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.66%) Firewall
2 4 (0.83%) Intrusion Detection
2 4 (0.83%) Network Security
2 4 (0.83%) WAN
3 3 (0.62%) SD-WAN
3 3 (0.62%) Wireless
4 2 (0.41%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (0.41%) LAN
4 2 (0.41%) Tactical Data Link
4 2 (0.41%) WebEx
4 2 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.21%) BGP
5 1 (0.21%) Broadband
5 1 (0.21%) MPLS
5 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.15%) Data Warehouse
2 18 (3.73%) NoSQL
3 10 (2.07%) Big Data
3 10 (2.07%) Tableau
4 9 (1.87%) Data Lake
4 9 (1.87%) Power BI
5 7 (1.45%) Hadoop
5 7 (1.45%) Metadata
6 6 (1.24%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.04%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.83%) DataStage
8 4 (0.83%) QlikView
8 4 (0.83%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.41%) Looker
9 2 (0.41%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
9 2 (0.41%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.21%) DB2
Development Applications
1 11 (2.28%) ERwin
2 6 (1.24%) GitLab
3 5 (1.04%) Axure RP
3 5 (1.04%) Cucumber
3 5 (1.04%) JIRA
3 5 (1.04%) MLflow
4 4 (0.83%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.83%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.21%) Git
5 1 (0.21%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.21%) Selenium
5 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
General
1 192 (39.83%) Finance
2 125 (25.93%) Social Skills
3 99 (20.54%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (18.05%) Marketing
5 56 (11.62%) Public Sector
6 49 (10.17%) Law
7 46 (9.54%) Legal
8 45 (9.34%) Presentation Skills
9 41 (8.51%) Retail
10 34 (7.05%) Pharmaceutical
11 33 (6.85%) Games
12 31 (6.43%) Banking
13 25 (5.19%) Influencing Skills
14 18 (3.73%) Financial Institution
15 17 (3.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 12 (2.49%) Aerospace
16 12 (2.49%) Publishing
17 8 (1.66%) Manufacturing
17 8 (1.66%) Telecoms
18 6 (1.24%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 91 (18.88%) Senior
2 84 (17.43%) Lead
3 73 (15.15%) Architect
4 63 (13.07%) Consultant
5 44 (9.13%) Account Executive
6 31 (6.43%) Sales Executive
7 28 (5.81%) Senior Sales Executive
8 20 (4.15%) Business Architect
8 20 (4.15%) Business Development Executive
8 20 (4.15%) Senior Consultant
8 20 (4.15%) Senior Manager
9 19 (3.94%) Solutions Architect
10 18 (3.73%) Business Sales Executive
10 18 (3.73%) Sales Account Executive
10 18 (3.73%) Senior Account Executive
11 17 (3.53%) Data Architect
11 17 (3.53%) Senior Architect
12 16 (3.32%) Business Consultant
13 14 (2.90%) Java Engineer
13 14 (2.90%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (2.49%) Spring
2 11 (2.28%) REST
2 11 (2.28%) Spring Boot
3 8 (1.66%) React
4 7 (1.45%) CSS
4 7 (1.45%) HTML
5 6 (1.24%) Kafka
5 6 (1.24%) OAuth
5 6 (1.24%) SOAP
6 5 (1.04%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.04%) Play Framework
6 5 (1.04%) PyTorch
6 5 (1.04%) TensorFlow
7 3 (0.62%) .NET
7 3 (0.62%) AngularJS
7 3 (0.62%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.41%) ASP.NET
8 2 (0.41%) Middleware
8 2 (0.41%) Vue
8 2 (0.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 41 (8.51%) Life Science
2 33 (6.85%) Self-Motivation
3 29 (6.02%) Enterprise Software
4 25 (5.19%) Blog
5 22 (4.56%) Cloud Native
6 20 (4.15%) Algorithms
7 15 (3.11%) Management Information System
7 15 (3.11%) Onboarding
7 15 (3.11%) Social Media
8 13 (2.70%) Product Ownership
9 12 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 11 (2.28%) Legacy Systems
10 11 (2.28%) Web Conferencing
11 10 (2.07%) AI Agents
11 10 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
12 9 (1.87%) Credit Risk
12 9 (1.87%) e-Learning
13 8 (1.66%) Podcast
14 7 (1.45%) NHS
14 7 (1.45%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.21%) Android
1 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.21%) VMS
1 1 (0.21%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (35.06%) AI
2 136 (28.22%) Analytics
3 128 (26.56%) Roadmaps
4 123 (25.52%) Business Development
4 123 (25.52%) Decision-Making
5 115 (23.86%) Agile
6 90 (18.67%) Mentoring
7 78 (16.18%) Business Strategy
8 76 (15.77%) Problem-Solving
9 73 (15.15%) Stakeholder Management
10 65 (13.49%) Computer Science
10 65 (13.49%) Generative AI
11 60 (12.45%) Cybersecurity
12 59 (12.24%) B2B
12 59 (12.24%) Data Science
12 59 (12.24%) Machine Learning
13 57 (11.83%) Workshop Facilitation
14 53 (11.00%) Strategic Thinking
15 50 (10.37%) Use Case
16 49 (10.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 35 (7.26%) Python
2 25 (5.19%) SQL
3 24 (4.98%) Java
4 11 (2.28%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.24%) Kotlin
5 6 (1.24%) R
6 5 (1.04%) C#
6 5 (1.04%) Scala
7 4 (0.83%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.41%) Go
9 1 (0.21%) ABAP
9 1 (0.21%) Bash
9 1 (0.21%) Ruby
9 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 138 (28.63%) Degree
2 64 (13.28%) Master's Degree
3 49 (10.17%) Security Cleared
4 43 (8.92%) PhD
5 31 (6.43%) SC Cleared
6 22 (4.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (3.11%) CISSP
8 14 (2.90%) CISM
9 12 (2.49%) DBS Check
10 10 (2.07%) PMI Certification
10 10 (2.07%) PMP
11 9 (1.87%) AWS Certification
12 8 (1.66%) Azure Certification
13 7 (1.45%) MBA
14 6 (1.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 6 (1.24%) DV Cleared
14 6 (1.24%) TOGAF Certification
15 5 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (1.04%) CRISC
15 5 (1.04%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.60%) GxP
2 19 (3.94%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.49%) NIST
5 11 (2.28%) GRC
5 11 (2.28%) QA
6 10 (2.07%) GDPR
6 10 (2.07%) PMO
7 9 (1.87%) Data Quality
8 8 (1.66%) EMIR
9 6 (1.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (1.24%) WCAG
10 5 (1.04%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.83%) EU AI Act
11 4 (0.83%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.83%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.62%) SLA
13 2 (0.41%) NCSC
13 2 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.83%) Docker
2 2 (0.41%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 16 (3.32%) Terraform
2 5 (1.04%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.62%) Ansible
3 3 (0.62%) Grafana
4 2 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.41%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 46 (9.54%) Dell
2 30 (6.22%) SAP
3 29 (6.02%) Microsoft
4 21 (4.36%) Google
5 20 (4.15%) Oracle
6 19 (3.94%) Databricks
7 13 (2.70%) HubSpot
7 13 (2.70%) ServiceNow
8 10 (2.07%) Adobe
8 10 (2.07%) IBM
8 10 (2.07%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.66%) Informatica
9 8 (1.66%) OpenLink
10 6 (1.24%) Cognizant
10 6 (1.24%) Workday
11 5 (1.04%) BT
12 4 (0.83%) Denodo
12 4 (0.83%) Teradata
13 3 (0.62%) Facebook
13 3 (0.62%) OpenAI