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 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 266 389
Rank change year-on-year -28 +123 -136
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 593 540 660
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.65% 1.22% 0.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.89% 1.32% 0.76%
Number of salaries quoted 244 143 413
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £58,750 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +10.00% -11.76%
75th Percentile £100,000 £101,875 £100,000
90th Percentile £116,750 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £73,496 £80,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% -8.13% +14.29%

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 66,949 41,023 87,141
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.83% 92.72% 82.59%
Number of salaries quoted 45,661 21,815 61,905
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £40,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,055 £50,000
% change year-on-year +4.89% +0.11% -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 9 June 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 9 June 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 -33 535 £80,000 -0.93% 212
London -4 327 £82,500 -5.71% 137
UK excluding London -77 206 £70,000 -4.76% 89
Work from Home +15 134 £70,000 -16.42% 85
North of England -27 70 £90,000 +5.88% 28
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 6
North West +10 45 £87,500 -7.54% 15
South East -94 35 £37,500 -42.31% 26
Midlands -12 31 £80,000 +77.78% 15
Yorkshire -36 19 £83,420 +11.23% 6
West Midlands -25 16 £80,000 +77.78% 9
East Midlands -10 15 £50,000 - 6
South West -35 12 £56,000 -32.12% 4
Scotland +1 9 £95,000 - 8
North East -40 6 £100,000 +71.67% 7
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 1

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 14 (2.36%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.01%) IIS
5 5 (0.84%) CMS
6 4 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.67%) Confluence
7 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.34%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.17%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.34%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.34%) InVision
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.34%) Sketch
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (3.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.84%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.67%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.51%) SAP MDG-BP
6 2 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.17%) Magento
7 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 116 (19.56%) AWS
2 79 (13.32%) Azure
3 58 (9.78%) SaaS
4 49 (8.26%) GCP
5 39 (6.58%) Snowflake
6 20 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
7 18 (3.04%) Serverless
8 12 (2.02%) Power Platform
9 10 (1.69%) PaaS
10 8 (1.35%) GitHub
11 7 (1.18%) Azure AI
11 7 (1.18%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (1.18%) SuccessFactors
12 6 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (1.01%) Microsoft Purview
13 5 (0.84%) Amazon Bedrock
13 5 (0.84%) dbt
13 5 (0.84%) Matillion
14 4 (0.67%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.87%) Firewall
2 7 (1.18%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.18%) Network Security
2 7 (1.18%) SD-WAN
2 7 (1.18%) WAN
2 7 (1.18%) Wireless
3 6 (1.01%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.01%) WebEx
4 5 (0.84%) Broadband
4 5 (0.84%) LAN
5 4 (0.67%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.67%) WLAN
6 3 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.34%) SSL
7 2 (0.34%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.23%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.89%) Data Lake
3 19 (3.20%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.85%) Big Data
5 10 (1.69%) Power BI
6 7 (1.18%) Tableau
7 6 (1.01%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.84%) Data Mining
8 5 (0.84%) Metadata
9 4 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 4 (0.67%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.34%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.17%) Data Vault
11 1 (0.17%) Redis
11 1 (0.17%) SAP BW
11 1 (0.17%) SAP Data Services
11 1 (0.17%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 15 (2.53%) Cucumber
2 14 (2.36%) GitLab
3 6 (1.01%) MLflow
4 4 (0.67%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Git
6 2 (0.34%) Axure RP
6 2 (0.34%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.34%) rollup.js
7 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.17%) Gatling
7 1 (0.17%) JMeter
7 1 (0.17%) Maven
7 1 (0.17%) Selenium
7 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 212 (35.75%) Finance
2 160 (26.98%) Social Skills
3 105 (17.71%) Marketing
4 104 (17.54%) Analytical Skills
5 77 (12.98%) Public Sector
6 62 (10.46%) Presentation Skills
7 57 (9.61%) Retail
8 45 (7.59%) Banking
9 38 (6.41%) Legal
10 37 (6.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 29 (4.89%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (3.71%) Financial Institution
13 18 (3.04%) Brand Awareness
13 18 (3.04%) Law
14 15 (2.53%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (2.02%) Manufacturing
15 12 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (2.02%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.85%) Aerospace
17 8 (1.35%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 154 (25.97%) Senior
2 95 (16.02%) Architect
3 87 (14.67%) Consultant
4 73 (12.31%) Lead
5 61 (10.29%) Account Executive
6 57 (9.61%) Sales Executive
7 49 (8.26%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.75%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.58%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.73%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.56%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.56%) Sales Account Executive
12 25 (4.22%) Business Architect
12 25 (4.22%) Senior Architect
12 25 (4.22%) Senior Consultant
13 24 (4.05%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (4.05%) Product Specialist
14 23 (3.88%) Business Consultant
14 23 (3.88%) Java Engineer
15 21 (3.54%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.54%) Kafka
2 20 (3.37%) Spring
2 20 (3.37%) Spring Boot
3 6 (1.01%) REST
3 6 (1.01%) SOAP
3 6 (1.01%) XML
4 5 (0.84%) LangChain
4 5 (0.84%) OAuth
4 5 (0.84%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.84%) Play Framework
5 4 (0.67%) Flutter
5 4 (0.67%) LangGraph
5 4 (0.67%) PySpark
5 4 (0.67%) PyTorch
5 4 (0.67%) React
5 4 (0.67%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.67%) VML
6 3 (0.51%) CSS
6 3 (0.51%) HTML
7 2 (0.34%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 54 (9.11%) Cloud Native
2 41 (6.91%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (3.88%) Blog
4 21 (3.54%) Distributed Systems
4 21 (3.54%) e-Learning
5 20 (3.37%) Life Science
6 18 (3.04%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.04%) Product Ownership
7 17 (2.87%) AI Agents
8 16 (2.70%) Onboarding
8 16 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
9 15 (2.53%) Public Cloud
9 15 (2.53%) Web Conferencing
10 12 (2.02%) Legacy Applications
11 11 (1.85%) Data Fabric
11 11 (1.85%) Greenfield Project
11 11 (1.85%) Social Media
12 9 (1.52%) Enterprise Cloud
12 9 (1.52%) Podcast
12 9 (1.52%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 4 (0.67%) Windows
2 3 (0.51%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (31.20%) Business Development
2 175 (29.51%) AI
3 172 (29.01%) Decision-Making
4 146 (24.62%) Mentoring
5 135 (22.77%) Roadmaps
6 132 (22.26%) Analytics
7 100 (16.86%) Agile
8 79 (13.32%) Problem-Solving
9 77 (12.98%) Stakeholder Management
10 75 (12.65%) Workshop Facilitation
11 70 (11.80%) Business Strategy
12 63 (10.62%) Continuous Improvement
12 63 (10.62%) DevOps
13 62 (10.46%) Strategic Thinking
14 59 (9.95%) Cybersecurity
15 58 (9.78%) B2B
16 56 (9.44%) Coaching
17 54 (9.11%) Machine Learning
18 53 (8.94%) Presales
19 52 (8.77%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 49 (8.26%) Java
2 45 (7.59%) Python
3 29 (4.89%) SQL
4 14 (2.36%) R
5 6 (1.01%) Scala
6 5 (0.84%) Kotlin
7 4 (0.67%) C#
7 4 (0.67%) Go
8 3 (0.51%) PowerShell
9 2 (0.34%) ABAP
9 2 (0.34%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.17%) Bicep
10 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 147 (24.79%) Degree
2 71 (11.97%) Security Cleared
3 36 (6.07%) SC Cleared
4 27 (4.55%) Master's Degree
5 22 (3.71%) CISSP
6 21 (3.54%) AWS Certification
6 21 (3.54%) CISM
7 17 (2.87%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 14 (2.36%) Azure Certification
8 14 (2.36%) DV Cleared
9 12 (2.02%) MBA
10 11 (1.85%) DBS Check
10 11 (1.85%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 10 (1.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 10 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (1.52%) CRISC
12 9 (1.52%) PhD
13 7 (1.18%) GSEC
14 6 (1.01%) CISA
14 6 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.73%) GRC
2 23 (3.88%) NIST
3 22 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 18 (3.04%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.36%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.36%) JSP 440
6 12 (2.02%) GDPR
7 11 (1.85%) QA
8 9 (1.52%) EU AI Act
9 8 (1.35%) Basel III
9 8 (1.35%) GxP
10 7 (1.18%) Government Security Classifications
10 7 (1.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (1.18%) PCI DSS
10 7 (1.18%) SLA
11 6 (1.01%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.51%) IFRS
13 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.34%) NCSC
13 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 13 (2.19%) Docker
2 5 (0.84%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (2.70%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.36%) Terraform
3 9 (1.52%) Ansible
4 5 (0.84%) Puppet
5 3 (0.51%) Argo
5 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.34%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.34%) Salt
7 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.17%) Consul
7 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
7 1 (0.17%) Grafana
7 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.19%) Dell
2 47 (7.93%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.58%) SAP
4 38 (6.41%) Databricks
5 25 (4.22%) Informatica
6 24 (4.05%) Denodo
6 24 (4.05%) ServiceNow
6 24 (4.05%) Teradata
7 22 (3.71%) Salesforce
8 19 (3.20%) Google
9 16 (2.70%) Oracle
10 15 (2.53%) Foundry
11 14 (2.36%) Palantir
12 13 (2.19%) HubSpot
13 7 (1.18%) Workday
14 6 (1.01%) Aruba
14 6 (1.01%) Cisco
14 6 (1.01%) Cognizant
14 6 (1.01%) Fortinet
14 6 (1.01%) OpenAI