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 6 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 307 263 413
Rank change year-on-year -44 +150 -156
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 600 581 597
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.21% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.84% 1.33% 0.70%
Number of salaries quoted 243 162 379
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £57,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £73,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +13.01% -11.52%
75th Percentile £101,250 £102,813 £97,500
90th Percentile £117,500 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £71,250 £67,500 £72,500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -6.90% +3.57%

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 71,660 43,627 85,517
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.61% 90.93% 82.16%
Number of salaries quoted 49,530 24,205 60,378
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £54,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +8.00% - -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 6 July 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 6 July 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 -49 547 £80,000 - 453
London -19 341 £85,000 -5.56% 324
UK excluding London -71 195 £71,250 +5.56% 160
Work from Home -15 133 £70,000 -15.15% 223
North of England -21 70 £95,000 +5.77% 38
East of England - 47 £60,100 - 7
North West -6 45 £95,000 +0.38% 26
Midlands -9 35 £80,000 +77.78% 22
South East -109 27 £37,500 -31.19% 54
West Midlands -23 19 £80,000 +77.78% 12
Yorkshire -19 18 £76,840 +2.45% 9
East Midlands -8 16 £50,000 - 10
South West -58 10 £59,750 -26.46% 13
North East -42 7 £100,000 +71.67% 3
Scotland +2 3 £110,000 +15.79% 26
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 (2.33%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.17%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.83%) CMS
5 4 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.67%) Confluence
6 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.33%) WordPress
7 1 (0.17%) Apache
7 1 (0.17%) Drupal
7 1 (0.17%) IIS
7 1 (0.17%) nginx
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
Applications
1 10 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.17%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.17%) InVision
4 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.17%) Sketch
4 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (3.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.83%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.67%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.50%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-BP
6 2 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.17%) Magento
7 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.17%) Summit
7 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 134 (22.33%) AWS
2 85 (14.17%) Azure
3 64 (10.67%) SaaS
4 49 (8.17%) GCP
5 29 (4.83%) Snowflake
6 24 (4.00%) AWS CloudFormation
7 22 (3.67%) Cloud Computing
8 21 (3.50%) Serverless
9 14 (2.33%) Power Platform
10 11 (1.83%) Amazon Bedrock
10 11 (1.83%) PaaS
11 10 (1.67%) GitHub
12 9 (1.50%) Azure AI
13 8 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.33%) SuccessFactors
14 7 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (1.00%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (1.00%) Amazon S3
15 6 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.00%) Firewall
2 7 (1.17%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.17%) Network Security
2 7 (1.17%) Wireless
3 6 (1.00%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.00%) SD-WAN
3 6 (1.00%) WAN
3 6 (1.00%) WebEx
4 5 (0.83%) Broadband
4 5 (0.83%) Internet
5 4 (0.67%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.67%) LAN
5 4 (0.67%) WLAN
6 3 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.33%) SSL
7 2 (0.33%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.17%) SMS
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.67%) Data Lake
3 21 (3.50%) NoSQL
4 12 (2.00%) Power BI
5 7 (1.17%) Big Data
6 5 (0.83%) Metadata
7 4 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.67%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.67%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.67%) Hadoop
7 4 (0.67%) SAP HANA
8 3 (0.50%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.33%) BusinessObjects
9 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.33%) SAP BW
9 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.33%) Tableau
10 1 (0.17%) InterSystems Cache
10 1 (0.17%) Redis
Development Applications
1 18 (3.00%) Cucumber
1 18 (3.00%) GitLab
2 6 (1.00%) MLflow
3 4 (0.67%) JIRA
4 3 (0.50%) Git
4 3 (0.50%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.33%) Maven
5 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.17%) Axure RP
6 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.17%) Gatling
6 1 (0.17%) JMeter
6 1 (0.17%) mountebank
6 1 (0.17%) Selenium
6 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 202 (33.67%) Finance
2 165 (27.50%) Social Skills
3 105 (17.50%) Marketing
4 101 (16.83%) Analytical Skills
5 92 (15.33%) Public Sector
6 62 (10.33%) Presentation Skills
7 59 (9.83%) Retail
8 44 (7.33%) Banking
9 41 (6.83%) Legal
10 35 (5.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 31 (5.17%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (3.33%) Financial Institution
13 19 (3.17%) Brand Awareness
14 15 (2.50%) Telecoms
15 13 (2.17%) Manufacturing
15 13 (2.17%) Organisational Skills
16 12 (2.00%) Law
17 10 (1.67%) Aerospace
18 7 (1.17%) Automotive
18 7 (1.17%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 150 (25.00%) Senior
2 97 (16.17%) Architect
3 80 (13.33%) Consultant
4 75 (12.50%) Lead
5 59 (9.83%) Sales Executive
6 58 (9.67%) Account Executive
7 44 (7.33%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.67%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.50%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.67%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.50%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.50%) Sales Account Executive
12 26 (4.33%) Senior Architect
13 25 (4.17%) Senior Consultant
13 25 (4.17%) Solutions Architect
14 24 (4.00%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (4.00%) Product Specialist
15 23 (3.83%) Java Engineer
16 22 (3.67%) Lead Architect
16 22 (3.67%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (4.50%) Kafka
2 22 (3.67%) Spring
2 22 (3.67%) Spring Boot
3 7 (1.17%) LangChain
3 7 (1.17%) LangGraph
4 6 (1.00%) REST
4 6 (1.00%) SOAP
4 6 (1.00%) XML
5 5 (0.83%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.83%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.67%) FastAPI
6 4 (0.67%) PySpark
6 4 (0.67%) VML
7 3 (0.50%) Flutter
7 3 (0.50%) OAuth
7 3 (0.50%) OAuth2
7 3 (0.50%) React
8 2 (0.33%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.33%) RESTful
8 2 (0.33%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 58 (9.67%) Cloud Native
2 45 (7.50%) Enterprise Software
3 33 (5.50%) Onboarding
4 26 (4.33%) Blog
5 24 (4.00%) e-Learning
6 20 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (3.17%) Public Cloud
8 18 (3.00%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.83%) AI Agents
9 17 (2.83%) Product Ownership
9 17 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (2.33%) Life Science
11 13 (2.17%) Web Conferencing
12 12 (2.00%) Legacy Applications
12 12 (2.00%) Social Media
13 11 (1.83%) Data Fabric
13 11 (1.83%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.67%) Enterprise Cloud
14 10 (1.67%) Security Posture
15 9 (1.50%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.83%) Linux
1 5 (0.83%) Windows
2 1 (0.17%) Unix
2 1 (0.17%) VMS
2 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (31.83%) AI
2 177 (29.50%) Business Development
3 164 (27.33%) Decision-Making
4 159 (26.50%) Mentoring
5 136 (22.67%) Analytics
5 136 (22.67%) Roadmaps
6 101 (16.83%) Agile
7 80 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
8 74 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
9 71 (11.83%) DevOps
10 70 (11.67%) Business Strategy
11 69 (11.50%) B2B
12 66 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
13 63 (10.50%) Cybersecurity
13 63 (10.50%) Strategic Thinking
14 61 (10.17%) CI/CD
14 61 (10.17%) Workshop Facilitation
15 56 (9.33%) Coaching
15 56 (9.33%) Machine Learning
16 52 (8.67%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 45 (7.50%) Java
2 44 (7.33%) Python
3 31 (5.17%) SQL
4 9 (1.50%) R
5 4 (0.67%) Go
5 4 (0.67%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.50%) C#
6 3 (0.50%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.33%) ABAP
7 2 (0.33%) Bash
7 2 (0.33%) Bicep
8 1 (0.17%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.17%) PHP
8 1 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 155 (25.83%) Degree
2 77 (12.83%) Security Cleared
3 43 (7.17%) SC Cleared
4 32 (5.33%) AWS Certification
5 24 (4.00%) CISSP
6 23 (3.83%) CISM
7 21 (3.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 21 (3.50%) Master's Degree
8 15 (2.50%) Azure Certification
9 14 (2.33%) DV Cleared
10 13 (2.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 12 (2.00%) CRISC
12 11 (1.83%) DBS Check
13 10 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 9 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (1.50%) MBA
15 7 (1.17%) GSEC
16 6 (1.00%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 6 (1.00%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (6.00%) GRC
2 29 (4.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.67%) NIST
4 18 (3.00%) GDPR
5 16 (2.67%) Accessibility
6 14 (2.33%) Data Quality
6 14 (2.33%) JSP 440
7 11 (1.83%) PCI DSS
8 10 (1.67%) QA
9 9 (1.50%) EU AI Act
9 9 (1.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 8 (1.33%) Basel III
10 8 (1.33%) SLA
11 7 (1.17%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.67%) GxP
14 3 (0.50%) IFRS
15 2 (0.33%) GAAP
15 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
15 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 17 (2.83%) Docker
2 6 (1.00%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 21 (3.50%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.67%) Terraform
3 11 (1.83%) Ansible
4 5 (0.83%) Puppet
5 4 (0.67%) Argo
6 3 (0.50%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.33%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.33%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.33%) Salt
8 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.17%) Consul
8 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.17%) Grafana
8 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.00%) Dell
2 57 (9.50%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.33%) SAP
4 33 (5.50%) Databricks
5 25 (4.17%) Informatica
6 24 (4.00%) Denodo
6 24 (4.00%) Teradata
7 22 (3.67%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.67%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.17%) Google
9 15 (2.50%) Foundry
10 14 (2.33%) Palantir
11 13 (2.17%) HubSpot
12 6 (1.00%) Aruba
12 6 (1.00%) Cisco
12 6 (1.00%) Cognizant
12 6 (1.00%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.00%) Juniper
12 6 (1.00%) OpenAI
12 6 (1.00%) Oracle