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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 311 257 419
Rank change year-on-year -54 +162 -166
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 614 574 508
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.61% 1.17% 0.54%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.83% 1.30% 0.66%
Number of salaries quoted 243 157 325
10th Percentile £44,600 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £60,625 £56,250 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £73,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +13.01% -9.51%
75th Percentile £105,000 £103,750 £97,500
90th Percentile £117,500 £120,000 £123,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £66,250 £70,000
% change year-on-year +9.43% -5.36% -

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 73,631 44,290 76,685
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.59% 90.03% 81.87%
Number of salaries quoted 50,962 24,903 52,597
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +1.82% -8.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 21 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 21 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 -37 561 £80,000 +1.59% 456
London 0 365 £95,000 +11.76% 360
UK excluding London -88 182 £72,500 +9.43% 114
Work from Home -16 138 £70,000 -17.65% 168
North of England -8 64 £95,000 +0.38% 25
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 10
North West +3 39 £95,000 +0.38% 18
Midlands -18 36 £80,000 +77.78% 14
South East -123 21 £37,500 -23.47% 39
West Midlands -21 19 £80,000 +77.78% 5
Yorkshire -31 18 £76,840 +2.45% 4
East Midlands -6 17 £50,000 - 9
South West -56 8 £59,750 -25.31% 9
North East -43 7 £100,000 +71.67% 3
Scotland +2 4 £110,000 +15.79% 9
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 15 (2.44%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.14%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.81%) CMS
5 4 (0.65%) Confluence
6 3 (0.49%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.33%) WordPress
8 1 (0.16%) Apache
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) IIS
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.49%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.16%) InVision
4 1 (0.16%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.16%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.16%) Sketch
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (4.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.81%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.65%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.49%) Distributed Ledger
5 3 (0.49%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.49%) SAP MDG-BP
5 3 (0.49%) Summit
6 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.16%) Magento
7 1 (0.16%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 156 (25.41%) AWS
2 91 (14.82%) Azure
3 63 (10.26%) SaaS
4 52 (8.47%) GCP
5 35 (5.70%) Cloud Computing
6 28 (4.56%) AWS CloudFormation
7 27 (4.40%) Snowflake
8 22 (3.58%) Serverless
9 14 (2.28%) GitHub
9 14 (2.28%) Power Platform
10 13 (2.12%) Amazon Bedrock
11 10 (1.63%) PaaS
12 9 (1.47%) Azure AI
13 8 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon Kinesis
15 6 (0.98%) Azure DevOps
15 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.09%) Firewall
2 10 (1.63%) Internet
3 7 (1.14%) Intrusion Detection
3 7 (1.14%) Network Security
4 5 (0.81%) Wireless
5 4 (0.65%) Broadband
5 4 (0.65%) Cisco ISE
5 4 (0.65%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.65%) LAN
5 4 (0.65%) SD-WAN
5 4 (0.65%) WAN
5 4 (0.65%) WebEx
5 4 (0.65%) WLAN
6 2 (0.33%) AMQP
6 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
6 2 (0.33%) MQTT
6 2 (0.33%) SSL
7 1 (0.16%) SMS
7 1 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.16%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.72%) Data Lake
3 24 (3.91%) NoSQL
4 12 (1.95%) Power BI
5 9 (1.47%) Big Data
6 6 (0.98%) SAP HANA
7 5 (0.81%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.81%) Metadata
8 4 (0.65%) BusinessObjects
8 4 (0.65%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.65%) Delta Lake
9 3 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.33%) SAP BW
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
10 2 (0.33%) Tableau
11 1 (0.16%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 21 (3.42%) GitLab
2 20 (3.26%) Cucumber
3 7 (1.14%) MLflow
4 4 (0.65%) Claude Code
4 4 (0.65%) Git
4 4 (0.65%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.65%) JIRA
4 4 (0.65%) Maven
5 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.16%) Axure RP
6 1 (0.16%) Gatling
6 1 (0.16%) JMeter
6 1 (0.16%) mountebank
6 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
6 1 (0.16%) Vite
General
1 210 (34.20%) Finance
2 164 (26.71%) Social Skills
3 111 (18.08%) Marketing
4 105 (17.10%) Public Sector
5 95 (15.47%) Analytical Skills
6 63 (10.26%) Presentation Skills
6 63 (10.26%) Retail
7 45 (7.33%) Banking
7 45 (7.33%) Legal
8 37 (6.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 36 (5.86%) Influencing Skills
10 20 (3.26%) Brand Awareness
10 20 (3.26%) Financial Institution
11 17 (2.77%) Telecoms
12 16 (2.61%) Law
13 15 (2.44%) Manufacturing
14 13 (2.12%) Organisational Skills
14 13 (2.12%) Public Speaking
15 12 (1.95%) Military
16 11 (1.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 147 (23.94%) Senior
2 107 (17.43%) Architect
3 77 (12.54%) Consultant
4 74 (12.05%) Lead
5 55 (8.96%) Sales Executive
6 52 (8.47%) Account Executive
7 45 (7.33%) Senior Manager
8 36 (5.86%) Business Development Executive
9 35 (5.70%) Senior Sales Executive
10 33 (5.37%) Solutions Architect
11 31 (5.05%) Senior Architect
12 30 (4.89%) Senior Account Executive
13 29 (4.72%) Business Sales Executive
13 29 (4.72%) Sales Account Executive
14 24 (3.91%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (3.91%) Product Specialist
15 23 (3.75%) Product Manager
15 23 (3.75%) Senior Consultant
16 22 (3.58%) Lead Architect
17 21 (3.42%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.05%) Kafka
2 24 (3.91%) Spring
2 24 (3.91%) Spring Boot
3 10 (1.63%) LangGraph
4 9 (1.47%) LangChain
5 6 (0.98%) REST
5 6 (0.98%) SOAP
5 6 (0.98%) XML
6 5 (0.81%) CrewAI
6 5 (0.81%) FastAPI
6 5 (0.81%) Model Context Protocol
6 5 (0.81%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.81%) TensorFlow
7 4 (0.65%) PySpark
7 4 (0.65%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (0.65%) React
7 4 (0.65%) VML
8 3 (0.49%) CSS
8 3 (0.49%) HTML
8 3 (0.49%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 63 (10.26%) Cloud Native
2 49 (7.98%) Onboarding
3 48 (7.82%) Enterprise Software
4 36 (5.86%) Blog
5 26 (4.23%) e-Learning
6 24 (3.91%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (3.75%) AI Agents
8 21 (3.42%) Public Cloud
9 19 (3.09%) Management Information System
10 17 (2.77%) Product Ownership
11 16 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (2.44%) Social Media
12 15 (2.44%) Web Conferencing
13 14 (2.28%) NHS
14 12 (1.95%) Legacy Applications
14 12 (1.95%) Life Science
15 11 (1.79%) Data Fabric
15 11 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
16 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Cloud
16 10 (1.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.81%) Linux
1 5 (0.81%) Windows
2 1 (0.16%) Unix
2 1 (0.16%) VMS
2 1 (0.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (34.04%) AI
2 179 (29.15%) Business Development
3 171 (27.85%) Mentoring
4 158 (25.73%) Decision-Making
5 153 (24.92%) Roadmaps
6 144 (23.45%) Analytics
7 99 (16.12%) Agile
8 84 (13.68%) Stakeholder Management
9 78 (12.70%) Problem-Solving
10 72 (11.73%) B2B
11 71 (11.56%) DevOps
12 68 (11.07%) CI/CD
12 68 (11.07%) Continuous Improvement
13 66 (10.75%) Business Strategy
14 65 (10.59%) Strategic Thinking
15 64 (10.42%) Coaching
15 64 (10.42%) Cybersecurity
16 61 (9.93%) Machine Learning
17 58 (9.45%) Infrastructure as Code
18 57 (9.28%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 46 (7.49%) Python
2 43 (7.00%) Java
3 34 (5.54%) SQL
4 8 (1.30%) R
5 4 (0.65%) Bash
5 4 (0.65%) Go
5 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.49%) C#
6 3 (0.49%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.33%) ABAP
7 2 (0.33%) Bicep
7 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.16%) PHP
8 1 (0.16%) Scala
8 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 166 (27.04%) Degree
2 82 (13.36%) Security Cleared
3 51 (8.31%) SC Cleared
4 35 (5.70%) AWS Certification
5 24 (3.91%) CISSP
6 23 (3.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 22 (3.58%) CISM
8 20 (3.26%) Master's Degree
9 18 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
10 14 (2.28%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.28%) DV Cleared
11 13 (2.12%) CRISC
11 13 (2.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 11 (1.79%) DBS Check
13 9 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.47%) MBA
14 8 (1.30%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 8 (1.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (1.14%) GSEC
16 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.37%) GRC
2 29 (4.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (3.75%) NIST
4 19 (3.09%) GDPR
5 14 (2.28%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.28%) JSP 440
6 12 (1.95%) Data Quality
7 11 (1.79%) PCI DSS
8 10 (1.63%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 10 (1.63%) SLA
9 9 (1.47%) EU AI Act
9 9 (1.47%) QA
10 7 (1.14%) Basel III
10 7 (1.14%) Government Security Classifications
11 5 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
12 4 (0.65%) PMO
13 3 (0.49%) IFRS
13 3 (0.49%) NCSC
14 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.33%) GAAP
System Software
1 19 (3.09%) Docker
2 6 (0.98%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 24 (3.91%) Kubernetes
2 17 (2.77%) Terraform
3 11 (1.79%) Ansible
4 5 (0.81%) Puppet
5 4 (0.65%) Argo
6 3 (0.49%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.33%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.33%) Salt
8 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.16%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 1 (0.16%) Consul
8 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.16%) Grafana
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 92 (14.98%) Dell
2 56 (9.12%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.35%) SAP
4 33 (5.37%) Databricks
5 27 (4.40%) Salesforce
6 25 (4.07%) Informatica
6 25 (4.07%) Teradata
7 24 (3.91%) Denodo
8 22 (3.58%) ServiceNow
9 21 (3.42%) Google
10 16 (2.61%) Foundry
11 15 (2.44%) Palantir
12 13 (2.12%) HubSpot
13 8 (1.30%) Oracle
14 7 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 7 (1.14%) Workday
15 6 (0.98%) Cisco
15 6 (0.98%) Cognizant
16 5 (0.81%) Ariba
17 4 (0.65%) Juniper