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 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 398 305
Rank change year-on-year +113 -93 -67
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 487 307 724
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.64% 0.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.89% 0.69% 1.09%
Number of salaries quoted 166 112 480
10th Percentile £44,375 £56,250 £44,960
25th Percentile £60,313 £72,500 £63,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £90,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +12.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £119,563 £121,125 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £89,500 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.79% +12.39% +2.75%

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 55,019 44,239 66,292
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.97% 92.93% 88.38%
Number of salaries quoted 33,006 22,069 51,040
10th Percentile £29,000 £33,750 £29,440
25th Percentile £38,500 £45,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,001 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -9.07%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 +109 414 £80,000 -7.51% 234
London +107 263 £85,750 -4.72% 142
UK excluding London +29 159 £70,000 -21.79% 192
Work from Home +47 92 £78,750 -6.62% 84
South East +11 49 £62,500 -12.28% 106
North of England -17 41 £75,000 - 45
North West -4 34 £70,000 -19.08% 27
East of England +20 30 £60,100 -32.85% 5
Scotland -23 17 £80,000 -20.00% 5
South West -5 10 £53,750 -30.65% 17
Midlands +8 9 £75,000 - 12
West Midlands +15 6 £75,000 - 5
Yorkshire -46 5 £90,000 +44.00% 13
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 7
North East -2 2 - - 5
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 3

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 9 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.23%) CMS
3 5 (1.03%) IIS
3 5 (1.03%) WordPress
4 2 (0.41%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.41%) Confluence
4 2 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.41%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.21%) CICS
5 1 (0.21%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 10 (2.05%) Maya
3 9 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
4 6 (1.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 6 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (1.03%) Adobe XD
5 5 (1.03%) InVision
5 5 (1.03%) Sketch
6 4 (0.82%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.62%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.62%) Elementor
8 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.21%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 14 (2.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.64%) Endur
4 4 (0.82%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.62%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.62%) Payment Gateway
6 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.41%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.41%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.41%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.21%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 77 (15.81%) AWS
2 59 (12.11%) Azure
3 41 (8.42%) SaaS
4 31 (6.37%) GCP
5 24 (4.93%) Snowflake
6 13 (2.67%) GitHub
7 11 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (2.26%) Power Platform
8 10 (2.05%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (1.85%) Cloud Computing
9 9 (1.85%) dbt
10 7 (1.44%) OCI
11 6 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.23%) Matillion
11 6 (1.23%) Microsoft Copilot
11 6 (1.23%) SuccessFactors
12 5 (1.03%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (1.03%) Figma
12 5 (1.03%) Google Ads
13 4 (0.82%) Alation
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.64%) Firewall
2 4 (0.82%) Intrusion Detection
2 4 (0.82%) Network Security
2 4 (0.82%) WAN
3 3 (0.62%) SD-WAN
3 3 (0.62%) Wireless
4 2 (0.41%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (0.41%) LAN
4 2 (0.41%) Tactical Data Link
4 2 (0.41%) WebEx
4 2 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.21%) BGP
5 1 (0.21%) Broadband
5 1 (0.21%) MPLS
5 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.90%) NoSQL
2 17 (3.49%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (2.05%) Big Data
3 10 (2.05%) Tableau
4 9 (1.85%) Power BI
5 7 (1.44%) Hadoop
5 7 (1.44%) Metadata
6 6 (1.23%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.03%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.03%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.82%) DataStage
8 4 (0.82%) QlikView
8 4 (0.82%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.62%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.62%) SQL Server
10 2 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.41%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.41%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 13 (2.67%) ERwin
2 6 (1.23%) GitLab
2 6 (1.23%) MLflow
3 5 (1.03%) Axure RP
3 5 (1.03%) Cucumber
3 5 (1.03%) JIRA
4 4 (0.82%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.82%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.21%) Git
5 1 (0.21%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.21%) Selenium
5 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
General
1 197 (40.45%) Finance
2 129 (26.49%) Social Skills
3 101 (20.74%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (18.48%) Marketing
5 57 (11.70%) Public Sector
6 54 (11.09%) Law
7 46 (9.45%) Legal
8 45 (9.24%) Presentation Skills
9 40 (8.21%) Retail
10 36 (7.39%) Games
10 36 (7.39%) Pharmaceutical
11 30 (6.16%) Banking
12 25 (5.13%) Influencing Skills
13 17 (3.49%) Financial Institution
13 17 (3.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 12 (2.46%) Aerospace
14 12 (2.46%) Publishing
15 8 (1.64%) Manufacturing
15 8 (1.64%) Telecoms
16 7 (1.44%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 92 (18.89%) Senior
2 88 (18.07%) Lead
3 77 (15.81%) Architect
4 60 (12.32%) Consultant
5 44 (9.03%) Account Executive
6 30 (6.16%) Sales Executive
7 27 (5.54%) Senior Sales Executive
8 21 (4.31%) Senior Manager
9 20 (4.11%) Business Architect
10 19 (3.90%) Business Development Executive
10 19 (3.90%) Data Architect
10 19 (3.90%) Senior Consultant
10 19 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
11 18 (3.70%) Business Sales Executive
11 18 (3.70%) Sales Account Executive
11 18 (3.70%) Senior Account Executive
11 18 (3.70%) Senior Architect
12 15 (3.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 15 (3.08%) Lead Architect
12 15 (3.08%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (2.46%) REST
1 12 (2.46%) Spring
2 11 (2.26%) Spring Boot
3 9 (1.85%) React
4 7 (1.44%) CSS
4 7 (1.44%) HTML
5 6 (1.23%) Kafka
5 6 (1.23%) OAuth
5 6 (1.23%) SOAP
6 5 (1.03%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.03%) Play Framework
6 5 (1.03%) PyTorch
6 5 (1.03%) TensorFlow
7 4 (0.82%) .NET
7 4 (0.82%) AngularJS
8 3 (0.62%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.41%) .NET Framework
9 2 (0.41%) JSON
9 2 (0.41%) Node.js
9 2 (0.41%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 43 (8.83%) Life Science
2 33 (6.78%) Self-Motivation
3 30 (6.16%) Enterprise Software
4 25 (5.13%) Blog
5 23 (4.72%) Cloud Native
6 22 (4.52%) Algorithms
7 17 (3.49%) Social Media
8 16 (3.29%) Management Information System
9 15 (3.08%) Onboarding
10 14 (2.87%) Data Structures
10 14 (2.87%) Product Ownership
11 13 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
12 12 (2.46%) Web Conferencing
13 10 (2.05%) AI Agents
13 10 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.85%) Credit Risk
15 8 (1.64%) e-Learning
15 8 (1.64%) NHS
15 8 (1.64%) Virtual Team
16 7 (1.44%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.21%) Android
1 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.21%) VMS
1 1 (0.21%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (34.50%) AI
2 140 (28.75%) Analytics
3 132 (27.10%) Roadmaps
4 122 (25.05%) Business Development
5 119 (24.44%) Agile
6 118 (24.23%) Decision-Making
7 92 (18.89%) Mentoring
8 85 (17.45%) Business Strategy
9 79 (16.22%) Problem-Solving
10 76 (15.61%) Stakeholder Management
11 69 (14.17%) Computer Science
12 68 (13.96%) Generative AI
13 62 (12.73%) Cybersecurity
14 61 (12.53%) Machine Learning
15 59 (12.11%) B2B
15 59 (12.11%) Data Science
16 57 (11.70%) Workshop Facilitation
17 51 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 51 (10.47%) Strategic Thinking
18 49 (10.06%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 38 (7.80%) Python
2 26 (5.34%) SQL
3 25 (5.13%) Java
4 12 (2.46%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.23%) C#
5 6 (1.23%) Kotlin
5 6 (1.23%) R
5 6 (1.23%) Scala
6 4 (0.82%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.41%) Go
8 1 (0.21%) ABAP
8 1 (0.21%) Bash
8 1 (0.21%) Ruby
8 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 142 (29.16%) Degree
2 70 (14.37%) Master's Degree
3 49 (10.06%) Security Cleared
4 47 (9.65%) PhD
5 31 (6.37%) SC Cleared
6 23 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (3.08%) CISSP
8 14 (2.87%) CISM
9 12 (2.46%) DBS Check
10 10 (2.05%) AWS Certification
10 10 (2.05%) PMI Certification
10 10 (2.05%) PMP
11 9 (1.85%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.64%) MBA
13 6 (1.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (1.23%) DV Cleared
13 6 (1.23%) TOGAF Certification
14 5 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 5 (1.03%) CRISC
14 5 (1.03%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (5.95%) GxP
2 18 (3.70%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.46%) GDPR
4 12 (2.46%) NIST
5 11 (2.26%) GRC
5 11 (2.26%) QA
6 10 (2.05%) PMO
7 9 (1.85%) Data Quality
8 8 (1.64%) EMIR
9 6 (1.23%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (1.23%) WCAG
10 5 (1.03%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.82%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.82%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.62%) EU AI Act
12 3 (0.62%) SLA
13 2 (0.41%) NCSC
13 2 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.82%) Docker
2 2 (0.41%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 17 (3.49%) Terraform
2 5 (1.03%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.62%) Ansible
3 3 (0.62%) Grafana
4 2 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.41%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 42 (8.62%) Dell
2 30 (6.16%) Microsoft
2 30 (6.16%) SAP
3 22 (4.52%) Oracle
4 21 (4.31%) Google
5 16 (3.29%) Databricks
6 13 (2.67%) HubSpot
6 13 (2.67%) ServiceNow
7 11 (2.26%) Adobe
7 11 (2.26%) Salesforce
8 10 (2.05%) IBM
9 8 (1.64%) OpenLink
10 6 (1.23%) Cognizant
10 6 (1.23%) Workday
11 5 (1.03%) BT
12 4 (0.82%) Informatica
13 3 (0.62%) Facebook
13 3 (0.62%) Fortinet
13 3 (0.62%) Instagram
13 3 (0.62%) MuleSoft