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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 298 273 385
Rank change year-on-year -25 +112 -126
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 591 505 660
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.15% 0.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.24% 0.77%
Number of salaries quoted 240 137 414
10th Percentile £44,750 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £75,225
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +9.67% -11.50%
75th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £112,525 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £75,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year -6.67% -6.25% +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 68,751 40,768 85,185
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.84% 93.20% 83.29%
Number of salaries quoted 44,945 21,478 61,112
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,625 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £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 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,967 £50,000
% change year-on-year +3.01% +1.93% -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 2 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 2 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 -19 532 £80,000 -2.44% 557
London +21 326 £82,500 -5.71% 391
UK excluding London -66 205 £70,000 -6.67% 201
Work from Home +31 129 £70,000 -17.65% 228
North of England -15 71 £90,000 +5.88% 60
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 11
North West -3 45 £87,500 -7.54% 45
South East -85 37 £37,500 -42.31% 50
Midlands -22 25 £80,000 +56.10% 28
Yorkshire -36 19 £83,420 +11.23% 9
West Midlands -34 14 £80,000 +56.10% 16
South West -51 12 £56,000 -32.12% 17
Scotland +2 11 £80,000 -15.79% 23
East Midlands -19 11 £50,000 - 12
North East -36 7 £100,000 +71.67% 6
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 4

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 (2.37%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.02%) IIS
5 5 (0.85%) CMS
6 4 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.68%) 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 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.51%) Adobe XD
3 3 (0.51%) InVision
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.51%) Sketch
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (3.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.85%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.68%) 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
1 113 (19.12%) AWS
2 75 (12.69%) Azure
3 57 (9.64%) SaaS
4 48 (8.12%) GCP
5 39 (6.60%) Snowflake
6 19 (3.21%) AWS CloudFormation
7 17 (2.88%) Serverless
8 10 (1.69%) Power Platform
9 9 (1.52%) PaaS
10 7 (1.18%) Cloud Computing
10 7 (1.18%) SuccessFactors
11 6 (1.02%) Azure AI
11 6 (1.02%) GitHub
12 5 (0.85%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (0.85%) dbt
12 5 (0.85%) Matillion
12 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
13 4 (0.68%) Azure Machine Learning
13 4 (0.68%) Microsoft 365
13 4 (0.68%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.88%) 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 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.02%) WebEx
4 5 (0.85%) Broadband
4 5 (0.85%) LAN
5 4 (0.68%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.68%) 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 (5.25%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.91%) Data Lake
3 18 (3.05%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.86%) Big Data
5 8 (1.35%) Power BI
6 6 (1.02%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.02%) Tableau
7 5 (0.85%) Data Mining
7 5 (0.85%) Metadata
8 4 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.51%) 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%) InterSystems Cache
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 14 (2.37%) Cucumber
2 13 (2.20%) GitLab
3 5 (0.85%) MLflow
4 4 (0.68%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Axure RP
5 3 (0.51%) Git
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
1 213 (36.04%) Finance
2 155 (26.23%) Social Skills
3 104 (17.60%) Analytical Skills
3 104 (17.60%) Marketing
4 78 (13.20%) Public Sector
5 62 (10.49%) Presentation Skills
6 56 (9.48%) Retail
7 39 (6.60%) Banking
7 39 (6.60%) Legal
8 36 (6.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 28 (4.74%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (3.72%) Financial Institution
11 18 (3.05%) Brand Awareness
11 18 (3.05%) Law
12 17 (2.88%) Pharmaceutical
13 15 (2.54%) Aerospace
14 12 (2.03%) Manufacturing
14 12 (2.03%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.86%) Telecoms
16 8 (1.35%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 150 (25.38%) Senior
2 96 (16.24%) Architect
3 88 (14.89%) Consultant
4 75 (12.69%) Lead
5 61 (10.32%) Account Executive
6 57 (9.64%) Sales Executive
7 44 (7.45%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.77%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.60%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.75%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.58%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.58%) Sales Account Executive
12 28 (4.74%) Business Architect
13 26 (4.40%) Senior Architect
13 26 (4.40%) Senior Consultant
14 24 (4.06%) Business Consultant
14 24 (4.06%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (4.06%) Product Specialist
15 22 (3.72%) Java Engineer
16 21 (3.55%) Business Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (3.38%) Kafka
2 19 (3.21%) Spring
2 19 (3.21%) Spring Boot
3 6 (1.02%) REST
3 6 (1.02%) SOAP
3 6 (1.02%) XML
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.85%) Play Framework
5 4 (0.68%) CSS
5 4 (0.68%) Flutter
5 4 (0.68%) HTML
5 4 (0.68%) LangChain
5 4 (0.68%) PyTorch
5 4 (0.68%) React
5 4 (0.68%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.68%) VML
6 3 (0.51%) LangGraph
6 3 (0.51%) PySpark
7 2 (0.34%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 51 (8.63%) Cloud Native
2 40 (6.77%) Enterprise Software
3 26 (4.40%) Life Science
4 24 (4.06%) Blog
5 20 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
5 20 (3.38%) e-Learning
6 18 (3.05%) Management Information System
7 17 (2.88%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.88%) Product Ownership
7 17 (2.88%) Self-Motivation
8 15 (2.54%) Web Conferencing
9 14 (2.37%) Onboarding
9 14 (2.37%) Public Cloud
10 12 (2.03%) Legacy Applications
11 11 (1.86%) Social Media
12 10 (1.69%) Data Fabric
12 10 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.69%) Podcast
13 9 (1.52%) Enterprise Cloud
13 9 (1.52%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.51%) Windows
2 2 (0.34%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (31.47%) Business Development
2 178 (30.12%) AI
3 172 (29.10%) Decision-Making
4 145 (24.53%) Mentoring
5 128 (21.66%) Roadmaps
6 125 (21.15%) Analytics
7 102 (17.26%) Agile
8 79 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
9 77 (13.03%) Stakeholder Management
9 77 (13.03%) Workshop Facilitation
10 71 (12.01%) Business Strategy
11 64 (10.83%) Continuous Improvement
12 61 (10.32%) Strategic Thinking
13 60 (10.15%) Cybersecurity
13 60 (10.15%) DevOps
14 58 (9.81%) B2B
15 56 (9.48%) Coaching
16 54 (9.14%) Machine Learning
17 53 (8.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 53 (8.97%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 48 (8.12%) Java
2 43 (7.28%) Python
3 27 (4.57%) SQL
4 14 (2.37%) R
5 5 (0.85%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.85%) Scala
6 4 (0.68%) C#
6 4 (0.68%) Go
7 3 (0.51%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.34%) ABAP
8 2 (0.34%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 148 (25.04%) Degree
2 71 (12.01%) Security Cleared
3 36 (6.09%) SC Cleared
4 29 (4.91%) Master's Degree
5 23 (3.89%) CISSP
6 22 (3.72%) CISM
7 20 (3.38%) AWS Certification
8 16 (2.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 14 (2.37%) DV Cleared
10 13 (2.20%) Azure Certification
11 12 (2.03%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 11 (1.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (1.86%) DBS Check
12 11 (1.86%) MBA
12 11 (1.86%) PhD
13 9 (1.52%) CRISC
14 7 (1.18%) GSEC
15 6 (1.02%) CISA
15 6 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.75%) GRC
2 23 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 23 (3.89%) NIST
3 19 (3.21%) Accessibility
4 14 (2.37%) Data Quality
4 14 (2.37%) JSP 440
5 12 (2.03%) GDPR
6 11 (1.86%) QA
7 10 (1.69%) GxP
8 9 (1.52%) EU AI Act
9 8 (1.35%) Basel III
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 (1.02%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.51%) IFRS
12 3 (0.51%) WCAG
13 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
13 2 (0.34%) GAAP
System Software
1 11 (1.86%) Docker
2 4 (0.68%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 14 (2.37%) Kubernetes
2 12 (2.03%) Terraform
3 8 (1.35%) Ansible
4 5 (0.85%) Puppet
5 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.34%) Argo
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 (16.24%) Dell
2 43 (7.28%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.43%) SAP
4 37 (6.26%) Databricks
5 25 (4.23%) Informatica
6 24 (4.06%) Denodo
6 24 (4.06%) Teradata
7 23 (3.89%) ServiceNow
8 22 (3.72%) Salesforce
9 19 (3.21%) Google
10 16 (2.71%) Oracle
11 15 (2.54%) Foundry
12 14 (2.37%) Palantir
13 13 (2.20%) HubSpot
14 7 (1.18%) Workday
15 6 (1.02%) Aruba
15 6 (1.02%) Cisco
15 6 (1.02%) Cognizant
15 6 (1.02%) Fortinet
15 6 (1.02%) OpenAI