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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 298 360 317
Rank change year-on-year +62 -43 -80
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 478 337 736
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.74% 0.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 0.79% 1.01%
Number of salaries quoted 168 121 497
10th Percentile £43,375 £47,500 £43,450
25th Percentile £61,250 £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 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £89,500 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.79% +12.39% -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 56,516 42,516 72,551
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 78.36% 93.70% 87.81%
Number of salaries quoted 34,044 22,349 55,477
10th Percentile £29,270 £32,500 £29,000
25th Percentile £39,000 £45,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,262 £80,000 £74,000
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% -9.09%

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 8 March 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 March 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 +51 406 £80,000 -7.51% 320
London +67 258 £86,500 -3.89% 188
UK excluding London +14 159 £70,000 -21.79% 216
Work from Home +20 92 £62,500 -26.47% 108
South East +1 43 £62,500 -12.28% 107
North of England -39 41 £78,750 -7.35% 53
East of England +28 35 £60,100 -38.20% 6
North West -8 33 £75,000 -17.19% 31
Scotland -18 17 £80,000 -20.00% 6
Midlands -4 10 £62,500 -16.67% 21
South West -10 10 £53,750 -32.81% 21
West Midlands +4 6 £75,000 - 14
Yorkshire -36 6 £90,000 +44.00% 14
East Midlands - 4 £50,000 - 7
North East -15 2 - - 8
Wales - 2 £42,000 - 2
Northern Ireland - 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 7 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.26%) CMS
3 5 (1.05%) IIS
3 5 (1.05%) WordPress
4 2 (0.42%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.42%) Confluence
4 2 (0.42%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.21%) CICS
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (0.21%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.46%) Maya
2 7 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.05%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (1.05%) Adobe XD
3 5 (1.05%) InVision
3 5 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.05%) Sketch
4 3 (0.63%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.63%) Elementor
4 3 (0.63%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.21%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.21%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (2.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (1.67%) Endur
3 4 (0.84%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.63%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.42%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.42%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.42%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.21%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.21%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.21%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.21%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 70 (14.64%) AWS
2 51 (10.67%) Azure
3 46 (9.62%) SaaS
4 34 (7.11%) Snowflake
5 26 (5.44%) GCP
6 11 (2.30%) GitHub
7 10 (2.09%) Power Platform
8 9 (1.88%) Dynamics 365
9 8 (1.67%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.46%) Cloud Computing
10 7 (1.46%) dbt
11 6 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.26%) Matillion
11 6 (1.26%) Microsoft Copilot
11 6 (1.26%) OCI
11 6 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
12 5 (1.05%) Figma
12 5 (1.05%) Google Ads
13 4 (0.84%) Alation
13 4 (0.84%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.88%) Firewall
2 4 (0.84%) Intrusion Detection
2 4 (0.84%) Network Security
2 4 (0.84%) WAN
3 3 (0.63%) SD-WAN
3 3 (0.63%) Wireless
4 2 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (0.42%) LAN
4 2 (0.42%) Tactical Data Link
4 2 (0.42%) WebEx
4 2 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.21%) BGP
5 1 (0.21%) Broadband
5 1 (0.21%) MPLS
5 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
5 1 (0.21%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (5.86%) Data Warehouse
2 18 (3.77%) Data Lake
3 15 (3.14%) NoSQL
4 11 (2.30%) Tableau
5 9 (1.88%) Big Data
5 9 (1.88%) Power BI
6 6 (1.26%) BigQuery
6 6 (1.26%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.26%) Metadata
7 5 (1.05%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.84%) DataStage
8 4 (0.84%) QlikView
8 4 (0.84%) SAP HANA
9 2 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.42%) Looker
9 2 (0.42%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.42%) SAP Data Services
9 2 (0.42%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.21%) DB2
10 1 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (1.26%) ERwin
1 6 (1.26%) GitLab
2 5 (1.05%) Axure RP
2 5 (1.05%) Cucumber
2 5 (1.05%) JIRA
2 5 (1.05%) MLflow
3 4 (0.84%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.84%) PowerDesigner
4 2 (0.42%) Git
4 2 (0.42%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.21%) Selenium
5 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
General
1 181 (37.87%) Finance
2 118 (24.69%) Social Skills
3 90 (18.83%) Analytical Skills
4 89 (18.62%) Marketing
5 56 (11.72%) Public Sector
6 50 (10.46%) Presentation Skills
7 41 (8.58%) Law
7 41 (8.58%) Legal
8 40 (8.37%) Retail
9 30 (6.28%) Pharmaceutical
10 28 (5.86%) Banking
10 28 (5.86%) Games
11 27 (5.65%) Influencing Skills
12 18 (3.77%) Financial Institution
12 18 (3.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 12 (2.51%) Aerospace
14 11 (2.30%) Publishing
15 8 (1.67%) Manufacturing
15 8 (1.67%) Telecoms
16 6 (1.26%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 94 (19.67%) Senior
2 74 (15.48%) Lead
3 68 (14.23%) Architect
4 63 (13.18%) Consultant
5 44 (9.21%) Account Executive
6 35 (7.32%) Sales Executive
7 29 (6.07%) Senior Sales Executive
8 21 (4.39%) Business Architect
8 21 (4.39%) Business Development Executive
8 21 (4.39%) Senior Manager
9 19 (3.97%) Senior Consultant
10 18 (3.77%) Business Sales Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Sales Account Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Senior Account Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Senior Architect
10 18 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
11 17 (3.56%) Business Consultant
12 15 (3.14%) Business Manager
13 14 (2.93%) Java Engineer
13 14 (2.93%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.30%) Spring
1 11 (2.30%) Spring Boot
2 9 (1.88%) REST
3 7 (1.46%) CSS
3 7 (1.46%) HTML
3 7 (1.46%) Kafka
3 7 (1.46%) React
4 6 (1.26%) SOAP
5 5 (1.05%) OAuth
5 5 (1.05%) OAuth2
5 5 (1.05%) Play Framework
5 5 (1.05%) PyTorch
5 5 (1.05%) TensorFlow
6 3 (0.63%) Flutter
6 3 (0.63%) Oracle Fusion
7 2 (0.42%) AngularJS
7 2 (0.42%) Middleware
7 2 (0.42%) SAP Fiori
7 2 (0.42%) scikit-learn
7 2 (0.42%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 37 (7.74%) Life Science
2 33 (6.90%) Self-Motivation
3 28 (5.86%) Enterprise Software
4 27 (5.65%) Blog
5 23 (4.81%) Cloud Native
6 17 (3.56%) Algorithms
6 17 (3.56%) Social Media
7 16 (3.35%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.93%) Management Information System
9 13 (2.72%) Web Conferencing
10 12 (2.51%) Product Ownership
11 11 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
12 10 (2.09%) AI Agents
13 9 (1.88%) Credit Risk
13 9 (1.88%) e-Learning
13 9 (1.88%) Podcast
14 8 (1.67%) NHS
15 7 (1.46%) Data Fabric
15 7 (1.46%) Data Structures
15 7 (1.46%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.42%) Windows
2 1 (0.21%) Android
2 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (35.56%) AI
2 135 (28.24%) Analytics
3 129 (26.99%) Decision-Making
4 126 (26.36%) Business Development
5 110 (23.01%) Roadmaps
6 109 (22.80%) Agile
7 88 (18.41%) Mentoring
8 68 (14.23%) Problem-Solving
9 67 (14.02%) Business Strategy
10 64 (13.39%) B2B
11 61 (12.76%) Generative AI
11 61 (12.76%) Stakeholder Management
12 60 (12.55%) Computer Science
13 58 (12.13%) Cybersecurity
13 58 (12.13%) Data Science
13 58 (12.13%) Workshop Facilitation
14 56 (11.72%) Machine Learning
15 54 (11.30%) Use Case
16 52 (10.88%) Strategic Thinking
17 50 (10.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 33 (6.90%) Python
2 24 (5.02%) Java
2 24 (5.02%) SQL
3 9 (1.88%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.26%) R
5 5 (1.05%) C#
5 5 (1.05%) Kotlin
5 5 (1.05%) PowerShell
5 5 (1.05%) Scala
6 3 (0.63%) Go
7 1 (0.21%) ABAP
7 1 (0.21%) Bash
7 1 (0.21%) Ruby
7 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 140 (29.29%) Degree
2 58 (12.13%) Master's Degree
3 50 (10.46%) Security Cleared
4 36 (7.53%) PhD
5 32 (6.69%) SC Cleared
6 22 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (3.14%) CISSP
8 14 (2.93%) CISM
9 13 (2.72%) DBS Check
10 10 (2.09%) PMI Certification
10 10 (2.09%) PMP
11 9 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 9 (1.88%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.67%) MBA
13 6 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (1.26%) DV Cleared
14 5 (1.05%) CISA
14 5 (1.05%) CRISC
14 5 (1.05%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 5 (1.05%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.81%) GxP
2 20 (4.18%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.51%) NIST
5 11 (2.30%) GRC
5 11 (2.30%) QA
6 9 (1.88%) Data Quality
7 8 (1.67%) EMIR
8 6 (1.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 6 (1.26%) WCAG
9 5 (1.05%) GDPR
9 5 (1.05%) JSP 440
9 5 (1.05%) PMO
10 4 (0.84%) EU AI Act
10 4 (0.84%) Government Security Classifications
10 4 (0.84%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.63%) SLA
12 2 (0.42%) NCSC
12 2 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.42%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.84%) Docker
2 3 (0.63%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 16 (3.35%) Terraform
2 6 (1.26%) Kubernetes
3 5 (1.05%) Ansible
4 3 (0.63%) Grafana
5 2 (0.42%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.42%) RSA Archer
6 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 57 (11.92%) Dell
2 29 (6.07%) SAP
3 27 (5.65%) Microsoft
4 26 (5.44%) Databricks
5 20 (4.18%) Google
5 20 (4.18%) Oracle
6 16 (3.35%) Informatica
7 14 (2.93%) HubSpot
8 13 (2.72%) ServiceNow
9 12 (2.51%) Denodo
9 12 (2.51%) Teradata
10 10 (2.09%) Adobe
10 10 (2.09%) IBM
10 10 (2.09%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.67%) OpenLink
12 6 (1.26%) Cognizant
12 6 (1.26%) Workday
13 5 (1.05%) BT
14 3 (0.63%) Facebook
14 3 (0.63%) Pardot