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

6 months to
15 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 299 263 399
Rank change year-on-year -36 +136 -146
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 584 547 659
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.23% 0.61%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.33% 0.74%
Number of salaries quoted 242 149 415
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,813 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £81,500 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.84% +8.67% -9.09%
75th Percentile £100,000 £103,750 £100,000
90th Percentile £117,250 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £71,991 £77,500
% change year-on-year -2.77% -7.11% +10.71%

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 67,867 41,257 88,577
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.84% 92.63% 82.08%
Number of salaries quoted 46,626 22,001 62,691
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,629
25th Percentile £41,250 £39,353 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 15 June 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 15 June 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 -43 527 £80,000 - 225
London -10 321 £85,000 -1.45% 158
UK excluding London -62 203 £70,000 -2.77% 87
Work from Home +4 133 £70,000 -15.15% 85
North of England -17 72 £90,000 +5.88% 18
North West +3 47 £95,000 +0.38% 10
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 7
Midlands -12 33 £80,000 +56.10% 14
South East -95 31 £37,500 -42.31% 32
Yorkshire -24 19 £83,420 +11.23% 4
West Midlands -22 17 £80,000 +56.10% 8
East Midlands -3 16 £50,000 - 6
South West -54 10 £59,750 -27.58% 13
Scotland +4 8 £95,000 - 4
North East -44 6 £100,000 +71.67% 4
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 (2.40%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (0.86%) CMS
4 4 (0.68%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.68%) Confluence
4 4 (0.68%) IIS
5 2 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
5 2 (0.34%) WordPress
6 1 (0.17%) Apache
6 1 (0.17%) Drupal
6 1 (0.17%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (1.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.34%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.34%) InVision
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.34%) Sketch
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (3.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.86%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.68%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.51%) SAP MDG-BP
6 2 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.17%) Magento
7 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (19.35%) AWS
2 80 (13.70%) Azure
3 59 (10.10%) SaaS
4 48 (8.22%) GCP
5 35 (5.99%) Snowflake
6 21 (3.60%) AWS CloudFormation
7 18 (3.08%) Serverless
8 13 (2.23%) Power Platform
9 11 (1.88%) PaaS
10 9 (1.54%) GitHub
11 7 (1.20%) Azure AI
11 7 (1.20%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (1.20%) SuccessFactors
12 6 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (1.03%) Microsoft Purview
13 5 (0.86%) Amazon Bedrock
13 5 (0.86%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (0.68%) Amazon ECS
14 4 (0.68%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.91%) Firewall
2 7 (1.20%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.20%) Network Security
2 7 (1.20%) Wireless
3 6 (1.03%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.03%) SD-WAN
3 6 (1.03%) WAN
3 6 (1.03%) WebEx
4 5 (0.86%) Broadband
5 4 (0.68%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.68%) LAN
5 4 (0.68%) WLAN
6 3 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.34%) SSL
7 2 (0.34%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.17%) Internet
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.14%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.79%) Data Lake
3 19 (3.25%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.88%) Power BI
5 9 (1.54%) Big Data
6 5 (0.86%) Metadata
6 5 (0.86%) Tableau
7 4 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.68%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.68%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.68%) Hadoop
8 2 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.34%) Semantic Layer
8 2 (0.34%) SQL Server
9 1 (0.17%) Data Vault
9 1 (0.17%) Redis
9 1 (0.17%) SAP BW
9 1 (0.17%) SAP Data Services
9 1 (0.17%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 16 (2.74%) Cucumber
2 15 (2.57%) GitLab
3 6 (1.03%) MLflow
4 4 (0.68%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Git
6 2 (0.34%) Axure RP
6 2 (0.34%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.34%) rollup.js
7 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.17%) Gatling
7 1 (0.17%) JMeter
7 1 (0.17%) Maven
7 1 (0.17%) Selenium
7 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 206 (35.27%) Finance
2 154 (26.37%) Social Skills
3 103 (17.64%) Marketing
4 101 (17.29%) Analytical Skills
5 78 (13.36%) Public Sector
6 61 (10.45%) Presentation Skills
7 58 (9.93%) Retail
8 43 (7.36%) Banking
9 38 (6.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 38 (6.51%) Legal
10 29 (4.97%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (3.42%) Financial Institution
12 18 (3.08%) Brand Awareness
13 16 (2.74%) Law
14 12 (2.05%) Manufacturing
14 12 (2.05%) Telecoms
15 11 (1.88%) Aerospace
15 11 (1.88%) Organisational Skills
15 11 (1.88%) Pharmaceutical
16 8 (1.37%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 151 (25.86%) Senior
2 91 (15.58%) Architect
3 84 (14.38%) Consultant
4 71 (12.16%) Lead
5 61 (10.45%) Account Executive
6 58 (9.93%) Sales Executive
7 47 (8.05%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.85%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.68%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.82%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.65%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.65%) Sales Account Executive
12 24 (4.11%) Data Management Specialist
12 24 (4.11%) Java Engineer
12 24 (4.11%) Product Specialist
12 24 (4.11%) Senior Architect
12 24 (4.11%) Senior Consultant
13 22 (3.77%) Business Architect
14 21 (3.60%) Business Consultant
14 21 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.77%) Kafka
1 22 (3.77%) Spring
1 22 (3.77%) Spring Boot
2 6 (1.03%) REST
2 6 (1.03%) SOAP
2 6 (1.03%) XML
3 5 (0.86%) LangChain
3 5 (0.86%) OAuth
3 5 (0.86%) OAuth2
4 4 (0.68%) Flutter
4 4 (0.68%) LangGraph
4 4 (0.68%) PySpark
4 4 (0.68%) PyTorch
4 4 (0.68%) React
4 4 (0.68%) TensorFlow
4 4 (0.68%) VML
5 3 (0.51%) CSS
5 3 (0.51%) HTML
5 3 (0.51%) Play Framework
6 2 (0.34%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 55 (9.42%) Cloud Native
2 42 (7.19%) Enterprise Software
3 23 (3.94%) Blog
4 22 (3.77%) e-Learning
5 21 (3.60%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (3.08%) Life Science
6 18 (3.08%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.08%) Product Ownership
7 17 (2.91%) AI Agents
8 16 (2.74%) Onboarding
8 16 (2.74%) Public Cloud
9 15 (2.57%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (2.40%) Web Conferencing
11 12 (2.05%) Legacy Applications
12 11 (1.88%) Data Fabric
12 11 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.71%) Social Media
14 9 (1.54%) Enterprise Cloud
14 9 (1.54%) Podcast
14 9 (1.54%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.86%) Windows
2 4 (0.68%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (30.99%) Business Development
2 172 (29.45%) AI
3 168 (28.77%) Decision-Making
4 148 (25.34%) Mentoring
5 130 (22.26%) Roadmaps
6 128 (21.92%) Analytics
7 98 (16.78%) Agile
8 76 (13.01%) Problem-Solving
9 74 (12.67%) Stakeholder Management
10 70 (11.99%) Business Strategy
10 70 (11.99%) Workshop Facilitation
11 65 (11.13%) DevOps
12 63 (10.79%) Continuous Improvement
13 61 (10.45%) Strategic Thinking
14 60 (10.27%) B2B
14 60 (10.27%) Cybersecurity
15 57 (9.76%) Coaching
16 54 (9.25%) CI/CD
17 50 (8.56%) Collaborative Culture
17 50 (8.56%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 49 (8.39%) Java
2 43 (7.36%) Python
3 29 (4.97%) SQL
4 12 (2.05%) R
5 5 (0.86%) Kotlin
6 4 (0.68%) C#
6 4 (0.68%) Go
6 4 (0.68%) PowerShell
6 4 (0.68%) Scala
7 2 (0.34%) ABAP
7 2 (0.34%) Bicep
7 2 (0.34%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 144 (24.66%) Degree
2 69 (11.82%) Security Cleared
3 36 (6.16%) SC Cleared
4 22 (3.77%) AWS Certification
4 22 (3.77%) CISSP
4 22 (3.77%) Master's Degree
5 21 (3.60%) CISM
6 18 (3.08%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 15 (2.57%) Azure Certification
8 14 (2.40%) DV Cleared
9 11 (1.88%) DBS Check
9 11 (1.88%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 10 (1.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 10 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.54%) CRISC
11 9 (1.54%) MBA
12 7 (1.20%) Computer Science Degree
12 7 (1.20%) GSEC
12 7 (1.20%) PhD
13 6 (1.03%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.82%) GRC
2 23 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.77%) NIST
4 18 (3.08%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.40%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.40%) JSP 440
6 12 (2.05%) GDPR
7 11 (1.88%) QA
8 9 (1.54%) EU AI Act
9 8 (1.37%) Basel III
9 8 (1.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 8 (1.37%) PCI DSS
10 7 (1.20%) Government Security Classifications
10 7 (1.20%) SLA
11 6 (1.03%) GxP
12 4 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.51%) IFRS
14 2 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 15 (2.57%) Docker
2 6 (1.03%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 18 (3.08%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.57%) Terraform
3 10 (1.71%) Ansible
4 5 (0.86%) Puppet
5 4 (0.68%) Argo
6 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.34%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.34%) 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 (16.44%) Dell
2 51 (8.73%) Microsoft
3 37 (6.34%) SAP
4 36 (6.16%) Databricks
5 25 (4.28%) Informatica
6 24 (4.11%) Denodo
6 24 (4.11%) Teradata
7 22 (3.77%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.77%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.25%) Google
9 15 (2.57%) Foundry
10 14 (2.40%) Oracle
10 14 (2.40%) Palantir
11 13 (2.23%) HubSpot
12 6 (1.03%) Aruba
12 6 (1.03%) Cisco
12 6 (1.03%) Cognizant
12 6 (1.03%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.03%) Juniper
12 6 (1.03%) OpenAI