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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 253 484
Rank change year-on-year -99 +231 -223
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 581 559 320
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.13% 0.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.26% 0.53%
Number of salaries quoted 266 147 162
10th Percentile £52,500 £42,000 £47,625
25th Percentile £64,001 £58,750 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% - -0.84%
75th Percentile £111,250 £105,625 £96,875
90th Percentile £117,500 £122,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £65,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +38.46% -18.75% +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 86,155 44,192 60,081
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.18% 88.99% 81.99%
Number of salaries quoted 59,150 24,458 32,463
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,325 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,608
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 -92 506 £90,000 +14.29% 1,854
London -72 316 £95,000 -2.81% 1,365
UK excluding London -74 190 £90,000 +38.46% 581
Work from Home -6 141 £80,000 +23.08% 705
North of England -23 68 £90,000 +16.13% 196
Midlands -19 40 £90,000 +33.33% 60
North West +1 39 £85,250 +10.00% 123
South East -100 28 £105,000 +147.06% 105
West Midlands -30 24 £90,000 +46.94% 46
South West -59 21 £100,000 +39.04% 63
Yorkshire -25 18 £90,000 +5.88% 43
East Midlands -17 16 £60,000 -40.00% 14
Wales -60 16 - - 10
East of England -22 12 £60,100 +33.56% 33
North East - 11 £100,000 - 30
Scotland -7 9 £90,000 +20.81% 79
Northern Ireland -79 1 - - 36

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 6 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
1 6 (1.03%) Palantir Foundry
2 5 (0.86%) CMS
2 5 (0.86%) Confluence
3 3 (0.52%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.52%) ArcGIS
3 3 (0.52%) SAS
4 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
4 2 (0.34%) WordPress
5 1 (0.17%) nginx
5 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.52%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 25 (4.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.03%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.86%) Distributed Ledger
3 5 (0.86%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.52%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.52%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.52%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.52%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.52%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 3 (0.52%) Summit
5 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 161 (27.71%) AWS
2 99 (17.04%) Azure
3 61 (10.50%) SaaS
4 45 (7.75%) GCP
5 35 (6.02%) AWS CloudFormation
6 32 (5.51%) Cloud Computing
7 19 (3.27%) Serverless
8 16 (2.75%) GitHub
9 14 (2.41%) Amazon Bedrock
10 13 (2.24%) Power Platform
11 11 (1.89%) Azure AI
12 10 (1.72%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (1.55%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (1.55%) PaaS
14 8 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.38%) Amazon S3
14 8 (1.38%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (1.20%) LangSmith
15 7 (1.20%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.89%) WAN
2 10 (1.72%) Internet
2 10 (1.72%) SD-WAN
2 10 (1.72%) Wireless
3 9 (1.55%) Broadband
3 9 (1.55%) Cisco ISE
3 9 (1.55%) Cisco Wireless
3 9 (1.55%) Firewall
3 9 (1.55%) LAN
3 9 (1.55%) WebEx
3 9 (1.55%) WLAN
4 2 (0.34%) AMQP
4 2 (0.34%) BGP
4 2 (0.34%) DNS
4 2 (0.34%) MQTT
4 2 (0.34%) Network Security
4 2 (0.34%) OSPF
4 2 (0.34%) VPN
5 1 (0.17%) GoToMeeting
5 1 (0.17%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.68%) NoSQL
2 20 (3.44%) Data Mining
3 19 (3.27%) Tableau
4 17 (2.93%) Amazon QuickSight
5 15 (2.58%) Metadata
6 12 (2.07%) Power BI
7 8 (1.38%) Big Data
8 7 (1.20%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.86%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (0.86%) Metadata Repository
9 5 (0.86%) RDBMS
9 5 (0.86%) SAP HANA
9 5 (0.86%) Star Schema
10 4 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.69%) BusinessObjects
10 4 (0.69%) Geospatial Data
10 4 (0.69%) Hadoop
11 3 (0.52%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.52%) PostgreSQL
11 3 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 31 (5.34%) GitLab
2 27 (4.65%) Cucumber
3 9 (1.55%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.03%) Git
4 6 (1.03%) Maven
5 5 (0.86%) JIRA
6 4 (0.69%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.69%) MLflow
7 3 (0.52%) Vite
8 2 (0.34%) Ant
8 2 (0.34%) Apache Ivy
8 2 (0.34%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.34%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.17%) ERwin
9 1 (0.17%) mountebank
9 1 (0.17%) rollup.js
General
1 262 (45.09%) Finance
2 201 (34.60%) Social Skills
3 150 (25.82%) Marketing
4 112 (19.28%) Public Sector
5 80 (13.77%) Analytical Skills
6 69 (11.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 56 (9.64%) Influencing Skills
8 49 (8.43%) Banking
9 45 (7.75%) Legal
10 40 (6.88%) Retail
11 33 (5.68%) Law
11 33 (5.68%) Presentation Skills
12 21 (3.61%) Back Office
13 18 (3.10%) Brand Awareness
14 17 (2.93%) Financial Institution
15 16 (2.75%) Manufacturing
15 16 (2.75%) Telecoms
16 14 (2.41%) Public Speaking
17 13 (2.24%) Aerospace
17 13 (2.24%) Military
Job Titles
1 120 (20.65%) Architect
2 104 (17.90%) Senior
3 74 (12.74%) Lead
4 54 (9.29%) Consultant
5 41 (7.06%) Senior Manager
6 36 (6.20%) Product Manager
7 30 (5.16%) Solutions Architect
8 28 (4.82%) Senior Architect
9 27 (4.65%) Java Engineer
9 27 (4.65%) Marketing Manager
10 26 (4.48%) Lead Architect
10 26 (4.48%) Principal Engineer
10 26 (4.48%) Principal Java Engineer
11 23 (3.96%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.79%) Security Architect
13 20 (3.44%) Digital Product Manager
13 20 (3.44%) Senior Digital Product Manager
14 18 (3.10%) Data Architect
14 18 (3.10%) Lead Security Architect
15 17 (2.93%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.34%) Kafka
2 28 (4.82%) Spring
2 28 (4.82%) Spring Boot
3 19 (3.27%) Terraform
4 13 (2.24%) LangGraph
5 12 (2.07%) LangChain
6 10 (1.72%) FastAPI
7 6 (1.03%) CrewAI
7 6 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.86%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.69%) Middleware
9 4 (0.69%) React
10 3 (0.52%) CSS
10 3 (0.52%) Next.js
10 3 (0.52%) OpenACC
10 3 (0.52%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.52%) pgvector
10 3 (0.52%) PyTorch
10 3 (0.52%) REST
10 3 (0.52%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 91 (15.66%) Cloud Native
2 65 (11.19%) Onboarding
3 45 (7.75%) Enterprise Software
4 37 (6.37%) Distributed Systems
5 32 (5.51%) AI Agents
6 31 (5.34%) Blog
7 28 (4.82%) Public Cloud
8 26 (4.48%) e-Learning
8 26 (4.48%) Social Media
9 23 (3.96%) Web Conferencing
10 22 (3.79%) Product Ownership
11 16 (2.75%) Management Information System
12 15 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.89%) NHS
14 10 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
15 9 (1.55%) Enterprise Cloud
15 9 (1.55%) Hackathon
16 8 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
16 8 (1.38%) Legacy Applications
16 8 (1.38%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.20%) Windows
2 6 (1.03%) Linux
3 2 (0.34%) Solaris
3 2 (0.34%) Unix
3 2 (0.34%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (36.14%) AI
2 179 (30.81%) Mentoring
3 165 (28.40%) Business Development
4 163 (28.06%) Roadmaps
5 162 (27.88%) Stakeholder Management
6 135 (23.24%) Analytics
7 116 (19.97%) Agile
8 103 (17.73%) Decision-Making
9 95 (16.35%) Coaching
10 81 (13.94%) CI/CD
11 79 (13.60%) Continuous Improvement
12 75 (12.91%) Machine Learning
13 71 (12.22%) Infrastructure as Code
14 70 (12.05%) B2B
15 69 (11.88%) Problem-Solving
15 69 (11.88%) Risk Management
16 64 (11.02%) DevOps
17 63 (10.84%) Technical Leadership
18 55 (9.47%) Microservices
19 54 (9.29%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 65 (11.19%) Python
1 65 (11.19%) SQL
2 37 (6.37%) Java
3 11 (1.89%) R
4 7 (1.20%) PowerShell
5 5 (0.86%) Bash
6 3 (0.52%) TypeScript
7 2 (0.34%) ABAP
7 2 (0.34%) Apex Code
7 2 (0.34%) Bicep
7 2 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.34%) Go
7 2 (0.34%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.34%) Scala
7 2 (0.34%) SOQL
7 2 (0.34%) SOSL
8 1 (0.17%) C#
8 1 (0.17%) Ruby
8 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 105 (18.07%) Security Cleared
2 103 (17.73%) Degree
3 74 (12.74%) SC Cleared
4 48 (8.26%) AWS Certification
5 29 (4.99%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 24 (4.13%) Master's Degree
7 16 (2.75%) CISSP
8 15 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (2.07%) CISM
9 12 (2.07%) Postgraduate
10 11 (1.89%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 8 (1.38%) Azure Certification
11 8 (1.38%) DV Cleared
11 8 (1.38%) MBA
12 7 (1.20%) Cisco Certification
13 6 (1.03%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 5 (0.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (0.86%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (3.44%) Data Quality
2 20 (3.44%) GDPR
2 20 (3.44%) NIST
3 15 (2.58%) Accessibility
3 15 (2.58%) GRC
4 13 (2.24%) PCI DSS
5 12 (2.07%) QA
6 10 (1.72%) SLA
7 7 (1.20%) Basel III
8 6 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
9 5 (0.86%) JSP 440
10 4 (0.69%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.69%) PMO
10 4 (0.69%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.52%) NCSC
12 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.34%) RMADS
12 2 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (3.27%) Docker
2 6 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.52%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 29 (4.99%) Kubernetes
2 7 (1.20%) Ansible
3 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.52%) Istio
4 3 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
5 2 (0.34%) Argo
5 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.34%) Puppet
6 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.17%) AppManager
6 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.17%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 62 (10.67%) Microsoft
2 42 (7.23%) SAP
3 25 (4.30%) Salesforce
4 22 (3.79%) Google
5 21 (3.61%) Oracle
6 15 (2.58%) Databricks
6 15 (2.58%) Workday
7 13 (2.24%) Cisco
7 13 (2.24%) HubSpot
8 10 (1.72%) Fortinet
8 10 (1.72%) ServiceNow
9 9 (1.55%) Aruba
9 9 (1.55%) Juniper
10 8 (1.38%) Foundry
10 8 (1.38%) OpenAI
11 6 (1.03%) Palantir
12 5 (0.86%) Marketo
13 4 (0.69%) Informatica
14 3 (0.52%) Apple
14 3 (0.52%) Guidewire