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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 290 287 345
Rank change year-on-year -3 +58 -81
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 539 418 748
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.02% 0.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 1.10% 0.95%
Number of salaries quoted 201 135 491
10th Percentile £40,000 £46,000 £43,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £68,125 £60,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +9.38% -8.57%
75th Percentile £97,500 £108,750 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £87,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year -20.00% +9.38% +3.23%

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 61,485 38,072 78,558
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.40% 93.03% 86.34%
Number of salaries quoted 37,986 22,481 58,309
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,241
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +9.09% -11.00%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,000
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,321 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.95% +8.64% -8.41%

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 4 April 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 4 April 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 0 471 £80,000 -7.51% 403
London +48 301 £86,500 -2.54% 243
UK excluding London -87 173 £70,000 -20.00% 286
Work from Home -2 106 £74,670 -15.61% 124
North of England -70 48 £80,000 -15.47% 54
East of England +14 46 £70,000 -28.02% 9
South East -69 43 £55,000 -21.43% 157
North West -34 38 £80,000 -15.47% 26
Scotland -34 13 £80,000 -20.00% 11
South West -26 10 £47,000 -47.78% 22
Midlands -51 10 £62,500 -16.67% 30
Yorkshire -53 8 £90,000 +20.00% 21
West Midlands -24 7 £75,000 - 25
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 5
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 3
North East -23 2 - - 8

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 8 (1.48%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (1.48%) Palantir Foundry
2 6 (1.11%) IIS
3 5 (0.93%) WordPress
4 4 (0.74%) CMS
4 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.56%) Confluence
6 1 (0.19%) Apache
6 1 (0.19%) Drupal
6 1 (0.19%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
Applications
1 14 (2.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 8 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.93%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.93%) InVision
3 5 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.93%) Sketch
4 4 (0.74%) Maya
5 3 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.56%) Elementor
5 3 (0.56%) Photoshop
6 2 (0.37%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (2.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.56%) Elite 3E
3 3 (0.56%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.37%) Endur
4 2 (0.37%) SAP SCM
4 2 (0.37%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.19%) Magento
5 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.19%) SAP CO
5 1 (0.19%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.19%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-F
5 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-S
5 1 (0.19%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.19%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 83 (15.40%) AWS
2 59 (10.95%) Azure
3 46 (8.53%) SaaS
4 44 (8.16%) Snowflake
5 40 (7.42%) GCP
6 10 (1.86%) GitHub
7 9 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (1.67%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.48%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (1.48%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
10 6 (1.11%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (1.11%) dbt
10 6 (1.11%) OCI
10 6 (1.11%) Serverless
11 5 (0.93%) Figma
11 5 (0.93%) Google Ads
11 5 (0.93%) Matillion
12 4 (0.74%) Azure Machine Learning
12 4 (0.74%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.41%) Firewall
2 7 (1.30%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.30%) Network Security
3 4 (0.74%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.74%) WAN
3 4 (0.74%) Wireless
4 3 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.56%) WebEx
4 3 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.37%) Broadband
5 2 (0.37%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.37%) LAN
5 2 (0.37%) SSL
5 2 (0.37%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.19%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.19%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.19%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.19%) WLAN
6 1 (0.19%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (6.68%) Data Warehouse
2 30 (5.57%) Data Lake
3 12 (2.23%) NoSQL
4 10 (1.86%) Tableau
5 8 (1.48%) Big Data
5 8 (1.48%) Metadata
5 8 (1.48%) Power BI
6 6 (1.11%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.93%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.93%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.74%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.56%) DataStage
9 3 (0.56%) QlikView
10 2 (0.37%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.37%) Looker
10 2 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.37%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.37%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.19%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 6 (1.11%) GitLab
2 5 (0.93%) Axure RP
2 5 (0.93%) Cucumber
2 5 (0.93%) MLflow
3 4 (0.74%) JIRA
4 3 (0.56%) ER Studio
4 3 (0.56%) ERwin
4 3 (0.56%) Git
4 3 (0.56%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.56%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.19%) Gatling
5 1 (0.19%) JMeter
5 1 (0.19%) Selenium
5 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.19%) Vagrant
General
1 185 (34.32%) Finance
2 126 (23.38%) Social Skills
3 91 (16.88%) Marketing
4 87 (16.14%) Analytical Skills
5 66 (12.24%) Presentation Skills
6 64 (11.87%) Public Sector
7 50 (9.28%) Retail
8 37 (6.86%) Legal
9 31 (5.75%) Banking
10 29 (5.38%) Influencing Skills
11 28 (5.19%) Law
12 27 (5.01%) Pharmaceutical
13 24 (4.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 20 (3.71%) Financial Institution
15 16 (2.97%) Aerospace
15 16 (2.97%) Games
16 13 (2.41%) Brand Awareness
17 10 (1.86%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (1.86%) Publishing
18 9 (1.67%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 126 (23.38%) Senior
2 79 (14.66%) Architect
3 77 (14.29%) Consultant
4 71 (13.17%) Lead
5 61 (11.32%) Account Executive
5 61 (11.32%) Sales Executive
6 43 (7.98%) Senior Sales Executive
7 38 (7.05%) Business Development Executive
8 34 (6.31%) Senior Account Executive
9 33 (6.12%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (6.12%) Sales Account Executive
10 28 (5.19%) Business Architect
11 26 (4.82%) Product Specialist
12 25 (4.64%) Senior Manager
13 24 (4.45%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (4.45%) Senior Architect
14 23 (4.27%) Senior Consultant
15 22 (4.08%) Business Consultant
16 19 (3.53%) Business Manager
16 19 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.04%) Kafka
1 11 (2.04%) Spring
1 11 (2.04%) Spring Boot
2 7 (1.30%) CSS
2 7 (1.30%) HTML
3 6 (1.11%) REST
3 6 (1.11%) SOAP
4 5 (0.93%) OAuth
4 5 (0.93%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.93%) Play Framework
4 5 (0.93%) PyTorch
4 5 (0.93%) React
4 5 (0.93%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.74%) Flutter
6 3 (0.56%) LangChain
6 3 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
6 3 (0.56%) XML
7 2 (0.37%) SAP Fiori
7 2 (0.37%) scikit-learn
7 2 (0.37%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.31%) Life Science
2 31 (5.75%) Blog
3 27 (5.01%) Cloud Native
4 26 (4.82%) Enterprise Software
5 25 (4.64%) Self-Motivation
6 15 (2.78%) Management Information System
6 15 (2.78%) Social Media
7 14 (2.60%) AI Agents
7 14 (2.60%) Onboarding
7 14 (2.60%) Web Conferencing
8 12 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (2.23%) e-Learning
9 10 (1.86%) Algorithms
9 10 (1.86%) Podcast
10 8 (1.48%) Data Fabric
10 8 (1.48%) Product Ownership
10 8 (1.48%) Security Posture
10 8 (1.48%) Virtual Team
11 7 (1.30%) NHS
12 6 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.56%) Windows
2 2 (0.37%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Android
3 1 (0.19%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.19%) VMS
3 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (33.95%) AI
2 162 (30.06%) Decision-Making
3 156 (28.94%) Business Development
4 132 (24.49%) Analytics
5 111 (20.59%) Roadmaps
6 102 (18.92%) Mentoring
7 99 (18.37%) Agile
8 73 (13.54%) Business Strategy
9 69 (12.80%) Workshop Facilitation
10 68 (12.62%) Problem-Solving
11 64 (11.87%) Stakeholder Management
12 63 (11.69%) Cybersecurity
13 62 (11.50%) B2B
13 62 (11.50%) Strategic Thinking
13 62 (11.50%) Use Case
14 61 (11.32%) Data Science
15 60 (11.13%) Generative AI
16 55 (10.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 53 (9.83%) Machine Learning
18 49 (9.09%) Presales
Programming Languages
1 34 (6.31%) Python
2 33 (6.12%) Java
3 21 (3.90%) SQL
4 6 (1.11%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.11%) R
5 5 (0.93%) C#
5 5 (0.93%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.93%) Scala
6 4 (0.74%) Go
7 3 (0.56%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.19%) ABAP
8 1 (0.19%) Bash
8 1 (0.19%) PHP
8 1 (0.19%) Ruby
8 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 159 (29.50%) Degree
2 63 (11.69%) Security Cleared
3 43 (7.98%) Master's Degree
4 41 (7.61%) SC Cleared
5 25 (4.64%) PhD
6 20 (3.71%) CISSP
7 19 (3.53%) CISM
8 15 (2.78%) Azure Certification
9 13 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
9 13 (2.41%) DBS Check
10 12 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 10 (1.86%) CRISC
11 10 (1.86%) DV Cleared
12 9 (1.67%) MBA
13 7 (1.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.30%) GSEC
13 7 (1.30%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 6 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 6 (1.11%) CISA
14 6 (1.11%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.27%) Accessibility
2 22 (4.08%) GRC
3 20 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (3.53%) GxP
4 19 (3.53%) NIST
5 12 (2.23%) Data Quality
5 12 (2.23%) QA
6 9 (1.67%) EU AI Act
6 9 (1.67%) JSP 440
7 8 (1.48%) GDPR
8 7 (1.30%) Government Security Classifications
8 7 (1.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.11%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.93%) WCAG
11 4 (0.74%) SLA
12 3 (0.56%) NCSC
12 3 (0.56%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.37%) IFRS
13 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
System Software
1 7 (1.30%) Docker
2 4 (0.74%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (2.97%) Terraform
2 10 (1.86%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.48%) Ansible
4 5 (0.93%) Puppet
5 3 (0.56%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.37%) Argo
6 2 (0.37%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.37%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.37%) Salt
7 1 (0.19%) Consul
7 1 (0.19%) Grafana
7 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (17.81%) Dell
2 39 (7.24%) Databricks
3 33 (6.12%) SAP
4 31 (5.75%) Microsoft
5 28 (5.19%) Google
5 28 (5.19%) Informatica
6 24 (4.45%) Denodo
6 24 (4.45%) Teradata
7 20 (3.71%) Oracle
8 15 (2.78%) ServiceNow
9 14 (2.60%) HubSpot
10 13 (2.41%) Salesforce
11 10 (1.86%) Adobe
12 8 (1.48%) Foundry
12 8 (1.48%) IBM
12 8 (1.48%) Palantir
13 7 (1.30%) Workday
14 6 (1.11%) Cognizant
15 5 (0.93%) BT
16 4 (0.74%) OpenAI