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 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 331 237 454
Rank change year-on-year -94 +217 -188
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 607 642 379
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.28% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 1.44% 0.58%
Number of salaries quoted 261 166 213
10th Percentile £47,500 £43,750 £47,500
25th Percentile £63,750 £57,813 £62,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £89,000 £82,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.54% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £110,000 £105,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £130,000 £140,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +18.52% -15.63% +6.67%

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 80,048 44,438 65,626
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.13% 88.74% 80.77%
Number of salaries quoted 55,528 25,365 40,468
10th Percentile £31,125 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,465
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -0.84% -7.56%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,803
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.50% -6.94%

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 29 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Thought Leadership in the UK

Thought Leadership
Top 17 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 29 August 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 -96 555 £90,000 +12.50% 816
London -47 364 £97,500 +9.86% 669
UK excluding London -115 196 £80,000 +18.52% 230
Work from Home -22 141 £72,500 -12.12% 303
North of England -38 61 £95,000 +0.38% 52
Midlands -19 38 £80,000 +23.08% 26
North West -11 35 £95,000 +0.38% 37
South East -125 30 £58,750 +34.29% 44
East of England - 26 £60,100 - 7
West Midlands -17 23 £80,000 +39.13% 19
Wales -48 19 £55,000 +15.79% 3
East Midlands -12 15 £70,000 - 6
Yorkshire -37 15 £72,170 -15.09% 13
South West -60 15 £59,750 -25.31% 55
North East -52 11 £100,000 +17.65% 2
Scotland -14 6 £110,000 +37.50% 34
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 11

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 16 (2.64%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.82%) Confluence
5 4 (0.66%) CMS
6 3 (0.49%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.49%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.16%) Apache
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) IIS
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (4.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.49%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.49%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.49%) Summit
5 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.16%) Magento
6 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 176 (29.00%) AWS
2 104 (17.13%) Azure
3 60 (9.88%) SaaS
4 58 (9.56%) GCP
5 35 (5.77%) Cloud Computing
6 31 (5.11%) AWS CloudFormation
7 26 (4.28%) Serverless
8 25 (4.12%) Snowflake
9 18 (2.97%) Power Platform
10 16 (2.64%) Amazon Bedrock
11 15 (2.47%) Azure AI
11 15 (2.47%) GitHub
12 9 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (1.48%) Amazon S3
12 9 (1.48%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (1.48%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.48%) PaaS
13 8 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (1.32%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.47%) Firewall
2 10 (1.65%) Internet
3 9 (1.48%) WAN
3 9 (1.48%) Wireless
4 8 (1.32%) SD-WAN
5 7 (1.15%) Broadband
5 7 (1.15%) Cisco ISE
5 7 (1.15%) Cisco Wireless
5 7 (1.15%) LAN
5 7 (1.15%) WebEx
5 7 (1.15%) WLAN
6 4 (0.66%) Network Security
7 3 (0.49%) Intrusion Detection
7 3 (0.49%) SSL
8 2 (0.33%) AMQP
8 2 (0.33%) BGP
8 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.33%) MQTT
8 2 (0.33%) OSPF
8 2 (0.33%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
2 25 (4.12%) Data Lake
2 25 (4.12%) NoSQL
3 20 (3.29%) Data Mining
3 20 (3.29%) Tableau
4 17 (2.80%) Amazon QuickSight
5 16 (2.64%) Power BI
6 8 (1.32%) Metadata
7 7 (1.15%) Big Data
8 5 (0.82%) Geospatial Data
8 5 (0.82%) SAP HANA
9 4 (0.66%) BusinessObjects
9 4 (0.66%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.66%) Hadoop
10 3 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.33%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 22 (3.62%) GitLab
2 21 (3.46%) Cucumber
3 7 (1.15%) Git
3 7 (1.15%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.99%) Maven
4 6 (0.99%) MLflow
5 5 (0.82%) JIRA
6 4 (0.66%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.33%) Ant
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Ivy
7 2 (0.33%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
7 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
8 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) JMeter
8 1 (0.16%) mountebank
8 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.16%) Vite
General
1 239 (39.37%) Finance
2 188 (30.97%) Social Skills
3 135 (22.24%) Marketing
4 101 (16.64%) Public Sector
5 73 (12.03%) Analytical Skills
6 62 (10.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 61 (10.05%) Retail
8 50 (8.24%) Banking
9 48 (7.91%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (7.58%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (5.60%) Legal
12 27 (4.45%) Law
13 22 (3.62%) Back Office
14 20 (3.29%) Brand Awareness
14 20 (3.29%) Financial Institution
15 17 (2.80%) Public Speaking
16 16 (2.64%) Telecoms
17 15 (2.47%) Aerospace
17 15 (2.47%) Organisational Skills
18 14 (2.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 130 (21.42%) Senior
2 114 (18.78%) Architect
3 68 (11.20%) Lead
4 65 (10.71%) Consultant
5 45 (7.41%) Senior Manager
6 34 (5.60%) Sales Executive
6 34 (5.60%) Solutions Architect
7 31 (5.11%) Product Manager
8 27 (4.45%) Senior Architect
9 24 (3.95%) Lead Architect
10 23 (3.79%) Senior Product Manager
11 21 (3.46%) Business Development Executive
11 21 (3.46%) Java Engineer
11 21 (3.46%) Security Architect
11 21 (3.46%) Senior Consultant
12 20 (3.29%) Account Manager
12 20 (3.29%) Principal Engineer
12 20 (3.29%) Principal Java Engineer
12 20 (3.29%) Product Specialist
12 20 (3.29%) Senior Digital Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.27%) Kafka
2 22 (3.62%) Spring
2 22 (3.62%) Spring Boot
3 21 (3.46%) Terraform
4 12 (1.98%) LangGraph
5 11 (1.81%) LangChain
6 8 (1.32%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.99%) XML
8 5 (0.82%) CrewAI
8 5 (0.82%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.66%) Middleware
9 4 (0.66%) PySpark
9 4 (0.66%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
9 4 (0.66%) React
9 4 (0.66%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.66%) VML
10 3 (0.49%) CSS
10 3 (0.49%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.49%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 77 (12.69%) Cloud Native
2 63 (10.38%) Onboarding
3 44 (7.25%) Enterprise Software
4 38 (6.26%) Blog
5 27 (4.45%) AI Agents
6 26 (4.28%) Product Ownership
7 25 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (3.79%) e-Learning
9 22 (3.62%) Public Cloud
10 19 (3.13%) Social Media
11 16 (2.64%) Web Conferencing
12 14 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.98%) Management Information System
13 12 (1.98%) NHS
14 11 (1.81%) Enterprise Cloud
15 10 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
15 10 (1.65%) Legacy Applications
16 9 (1.48%) Hackathon
17 8 (1.32%) Low-Code
18 7 (1.15%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.32%) Linux
2 6 (0.99%) Windows
3 3 (0.49%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.33%) Solaris
4 2 (0.33%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 220 (36.24%) AI
2 178 (29.32%) Mentoring
3 170 (28.01%) Business Development
4 169 (27.84%) Roadmaps
5 146 (24.05%) Analytics
6 141 (23.23%) Decision-Making
7 116 (19.11%) Stakeholder Management
8 110 (18.12%) Agile
9 82 (13.51%) Continuous Improvement
10 78 (12.85%) Machine Learning
11 76 (12.52%) CI/CD
12 75 (12.36%) DevOps
13 71 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
13 71 (11.70%) Risk Management
14 67 (11.04%) Coaching
15 66 (10.87%) B2B
16 64 (10.54%) Infrastructure as Code
17 57 (9.39%) Business Intelligence
17 57 (9.39%) Strategic Thinking
18 56 (9.23%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 77 (12.69%) Python
2 55 (9.06%) SQL
3 42 (6.92%) Java
4 11 (1.81%) R
5 5 (0.82%) Bash
5 5 (0.82%) PowerShell
6 4 (0.66%) Go
7 3 (0.49%) C#
8 2 (0.33%) ABAP
8 2 (0.33%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.33%) Bicep
8 2 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.33%) Scala
8 2 (0.33%) SOQL
8 2 (0.33%) SOSL
9 1 (0.16%) PHP
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 154 (25.37%) Degree
2 93 (15.32%) Security Cleared
3 63 (10.38%) SC Cleared
4 42 (6.92%) AWS Certification
5 24 (3.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 24 (3.95%) Master's Degree
6 18 (2.97%) Azure Certification
6 18 (2.97%) CISSP
6 18 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (2.64%) CISM
8 15 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (1.98%) DV Cleared
9 12 (1.98%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 9 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
10 9 (1.48%) CRISC
10 9 (1.48%) MBA
11 8 (1.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 8 (1.32%) Postgraduate
12 7 (1.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 7 (1.15%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (4.28%) GRC
3 23 (3.79%) GDPR
4 21 (3.46%) NIST
5 19 (3.13%) Data Quality
6 18 (2.97%) Accessibility
7 14 (2.31%) QA
8 11 (1.81%) SLA
9 10 (1.65%) PCI DSS
10 9 (1.48%) JSP 440
11 7 (1.15%) Basel III
11 7 (1.15%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.99%) EU AI Act
13 5 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.66%) IFRS
14 4 (0.66%) PMO
15 3 (0.49%) Government Security Classifications
15 3 (0.49%) NCSC
15 3 (0.49%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 23 (3.79%) Docker
2 5 (0.82%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 29 (4.78%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.31%) Ansible
3 7 (1.15%) Puppet
4 5 (0.82%) Progress Chef
5 4 (0.66%) Argo
6 2 (0.33%) Salt
7 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.16%) AppManager
7 1 (0.16%) Consul
7 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
7 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.16%) Istio
7 1 (0.16%) Packer
7 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 62 (10.21%) Microsoft
2 51 (8.40%) Dell
3 35 (5.77%) Databricks
4 34 (5.60%) SAP
5 27 (4.45%) Google
6 24 (3.95%) Informatica
6 24 (3.95%) Salesforce
7 21 (3.46%) Teradata
8 20 (3.29%) Denodo
9 19 (3.13%) Foundry
10 17 (2.80%) ServiceNow
11 16 (2.64%) Palantir
12 11 (1.81%) Cisco
13 10 (1.65%) OpenAI
14 9 (1.48%) Oracle
15 8 (1.32%) Fortinet
16 7 (1.15%) Aruba
16 7 (1.15%) HubSpot
16 7 (1.15%) Juniper
17 6 (0.99%) Cognizant