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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 312 254 449
Rank change year-on-year -58 +195 -194
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 632 603 411
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.21% 0.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.81% 1.36% 0.61%
Number of salaries quoted 253 155 244
10th Percentile £47,100 £42,000 £45,375
25th Percentile £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +3.13% -
75th Percentile £108,600 £105,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £119,925 £120,000 £139,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,500 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +11.85% -15.63% +6.67%

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 78,019 44,452 67,790
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.52% 89.29% 81.16%
Number of salaries quoted 53,759 25,267 43,796
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +14.58% -4.00% -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 11 August 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 11 August 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 -59 572 £85,000 +6.25% 800
London -38 372 £95,000 +5.56% 577
UK excluding London -82 205 £75,500 +11.85% 258
Work from Home -13 147 £70,000 -17.65% 373
North of England -22 64 £95,000 +0.38% 94
North West -5 38 £95,000 +0.38% 79
Midlands -31 38 £80,000 +56.10% 39
East of England - 36 £60,100 - 13
South East -122 29 £58,750 +39.88% 52
West Midlands -35 21 £80,000 +56.10% 32
Wales - 19 £55,000 - 6
East Midlands -8 17 £50,000 - 7
Yorkshire -28 15 £72,170 -3.77% 12
South West -64 14 £59,750 -25.31% 26
North East -49 11 £100,000 +71.67% 3
Scotland -2 4 £110,000 +15.79% 17
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 13

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 16 (2.53%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.79%) Confluence
5 3 (0.47%) CMS
5 3 (0.47%) SAS
6 2 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.32%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.32%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.32%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.16%) Apache
7 1 (0.16%) Drupal
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
7 1 (0.16%) nginx
7 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.16%) InVision
5 1 (0.16%) Sketch
5 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (3.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.95%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.63%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.63%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.47%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.47%) Summit
5 2 (0.32%) Elite 3E
5 2 (0.32%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.32%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.16%) Magento
6 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 181 (28.64%) AWS
2 99 (15.66%) Azure
3 60 (9.49%) SaaS
4 55 (8.70%) GCP
5 37 (5.85%) Cloud Computing
6 30 (4.75%) AWS CloudFormation
6 30 (4.75%) Snowflake
7 25 (3.96%) Serverless
8 17 (2.69%) Power Platform
9 15 (2.37%) Amazon Bedrock
10 13 (2.06%) GitHub
11 12 (1.90%) Azure AI
12 9 (1.42%) PaaS
13 8 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.27%) Amazon S3
13 8 (1.27%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (1.27%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (1.27%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (1.11%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (1.11%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (2.85%) Firewall
2 10 (1.58%) Internet
3 6 (0.95%) Intrusion Detection
3 6 (0.95%) Network Security
3 6 (0.95%) Wireless
4 5 (0.79%) Broadband
4 5 (0.79%) Cisco ISE
4 5 (0.79%) Cisco Wireless
4 5 (0.79%) LAN
4 5 (0.79%) SD-WAN
4 5 (0.79%) WAN
4 5 (0.79%) WebEx
4 5 (0.79%) WLAN
5 2 (0.32%) AMQP
5 2 (0.32%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.32%) MQTT
5 2 (0.32%) SSL
6 1 (0.16%) SMS
6 1 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.16%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.59%) Data Lake
3 24 (3.80%) NoSQL
4 20 (3.16%) Data Mining
5 19 (3.01%) Tableau
6 17 (2.69%) Amazon QuickSight
7 16 (2.53%) Power BI
8 7 (1.11%) Big Data
8 7 (1.11%) Metadata
9 5 (0.79%) SAP HANA
10 4 (0.63%) BusinessObjects
10 4 (0.63%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.63%) Geospatial Data
10 4 (0.63%) Hadoop
11 3 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.32%) Power Query
12 2 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
12 2 (0.32%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 21 (3.32%) GitLab
2 20 (3.16%) Cucumber
3 8 (1.27%) MLflow
4 6 (0.95%) Git
4 6 (0.95%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.95%) Maven
5 5 (0.79%) JIRA
6 4 (0.63%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.32%) Ant
7 2 (0.32%) Apache Ivy
7 2 (0.32%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.32%) IBM UrbanCode
7 2 (0.32%) rollup.js
8 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.16%) Axure RP
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) JMeter
8 1 (0.16%) mountebank
8 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.16%) Vite
General
1 241 (38.13%) Finance
2 175 (27.69%) Social Skills
3 128 (20.25%) Marketing
4 118 (18.67%) Public Sector
5 85 (13.45%) Analytical Skills
6 62 (9.81%) Retail
7 59 (9.34%) Presentation Skills
8 58 (9.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 48 (7.59%) Banking
10 41 (6.49%) Influencing Skills
11 40 (6.33%) Legal
12 22 (3.48%) Law
13 21 (3.32%) Brand Awareness
14 19 (3.01%) Back Office
14 19 (3.01%) Telecoms
15 18 (2.85%) Financial Institution
16 17 (2.69%) Public Speaking
17 15 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
18 14 (2.22%) Aerospace
18 14 (2.22%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 140 (22.15%) Senior
2 108 (17.09%) Architect
3 73 (11.55%) Consultant
3 73 (11.55%) Lead
4 48 (7.59%) Senior Manager
5 39 (6.17%) Sales Executive
6 37 (5.85%) Account Executive
7 32 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.59%) Product Manager
9 28 (4.43%) Senior Architect
10 24 (3.80%) Data Management Specialist
10 24 (3.80%) Product Specialist
10 24 (3.80%) Senior Consultant
11 23 (3.64%) Lead Architect
11 23 (3.64%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.48%) Business Development Executive
13 21 (3.32%) Java Engineer
13 21 (3.32%) Security Architect
14 20 (3.16%) Account Manager
14 20 (3.16%) Senior Digital Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.91%) Kafka
2 23 (3.64%) Spring
2 23 (3.64%) Spring Boot
3 11 (1.74%) LangGraph
4 10 (1.58%) LangChain
5 7 (1.11%) FastAPI
6 6 (0.95%) XML
7 5 (0.79%) CrewAI
7 5 (0.79%) Model Context Protocol
7 5 (0.79%) PyTorch
7 5 (0.79%) TensorFlow
8 4 (0.63%) CSS
8 4 (0.63%) PySpark
8 4 (0.63%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (0.63%) React
8 4 (0.63%) REST
8 4 (0.63%) SOAP
8 4 (0.63%) VML
9 3 (0.47%) HTML
9 3 (0.47%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 71 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 63 (9.97%) Onboarding
3 46 (7.28%) Enterprise Software
4 40 (6.33%) Blog
5 27 (4.27%) AI Agents
6 25 (3.96%) e-Learning
7 24 (3.80%) Distributed Systems
7 24 (3.80%) Product Ownership
8 21 (3.32%) Public Cloud
9 19 (3.01%) Social Media
10 17 (2.69%) Web Conferencing
11 14 (2.22%) Management Information System
11 14 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (2.06%) NHS
13 12 (1.90%) Legacy Applications
14 11 (1.74%) Greenfield Project
15 10 (1.58%) Data Fabric
15 10 (1.58%) Enterprise Cloud
15 10 (1.58%) Life Science
16 9 (1.42%) Hackathon
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.27%) Linux
2 7 (1.11%) Windows
3 3 (0.47%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.32%) Solaris
4 2 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 224 (35.44%) AI
2 186 (29.43%) Mentoring
3 167 (26.42%) Business Development
4 165 (26.11%) Decision-Making
4 165 (26.11%) Roadmaps
5 156 (24.68%) Analytics
6 108 (17.09%) Agile
7 95 (15.03%) Stakeholder Management
8 82 (12.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 82 (12.97%) Problem-Solving
9 81 (12.82%) Machine Learning
10 75 (11.87%) DevOps
11 73 (11.55%) CI/CD
12 70 (11.08%) Cybersecurity
13 69 (10.92%) B2B
13 69 (10.92%) Coaching
14 66 (10.44%) Risk Management
15 64 (10.13%) Strategic Thinking
16 63 (9.97%) Infrastructure as Code
17 59 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 72 (11.39%) Python
2 54 (8.54%) SQL
3 43 (6.80%) Java
4 10 (1.58%) R
5 6 (0.95%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.79%) Bash
7 4 (0.63%) Go
8 3 (0.47%) C#
8 3 (0.47%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.32%) ABAP
9 2 (0.32%) Bicep
9 2 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.32%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.32%) Scala
10 1 (0.16%) PHP
10 1 (0.16%) Ruby
10 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 152 (24.05%) Degree
2 95 (15.03%) Security Cleared
3 64 (10.13%) SC Cleared
4 41 (6.49%) AWS Certification
5 23 (3.64%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 23 (3.64%) Master's Degree
6 22 (3.48%) CISSP
7 20 (3.16%) CISM
8 17 (2.69%) Azure Certification
8 17 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
9 16 (2.53%) DV Cleared
10 15 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
11 13 (2.06%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 12 (1.90%) CRISC
13 10 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
13 10 (1.58%) DBS Check
13 10 (1.58%) MBA
14 8 (1.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 8 (1.27%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.95%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (4.59%) GRC
3 25 (3.96%) NIST
4 23 (3.64%) GDPR
5 18 (2.85%) Accessibility
6 17 (2.69%) Data Quality
7 13 (2.06%) JSP 440
8 12 (1.90%) SLA
9 11 (1.74%) PCI DSS
9 11 (1.74%) QA
10 9 (1.42%) EU AI Act
10 9 (1.42%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (1.11%) Basel III
12 6 (0.95%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.79%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.63%) IFRS
14 4 (0.63%) PMO
15 3 (0.47%) NCSC
15 3 (0.47%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.47%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (3.48%) Docker
2 6 (0.95%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.47%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 27 (4.27%) Kubernetes
2 20 (3.16%) Terraform
3 13 (2.06%) Ansible
4 7 (1.11%) Puppet
5 5 (0.79%) Progress Chef
6 4 (0.63%) Argo
7 2 (0.32%) Salt
8 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.16%) Consul
8 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
8 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 77 (12.18%) Dell
2 59 (9.34%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.01%) Databricks
4 37 (5.85%) SAP
5 27 (4.27%) Informatica
6 25 (3.96%) Google
6 25 (3.96%) Teradata
7 24 (3.80%) Denodo
7 24 (3.80%) Salesforce
8 21 (3.32%) ServiceNow
9 18 (2.85%) Foundry
10 16 (2.53%) Palantir
11 9 (1.42%) HubSpot
12 8 (1.27%) Cisco
13 7 (1.11%) OpenAI
13 7 (1.11%) Oracle
13 7 (1.11%) Workday
14 6 (0.95%) Cognizant
15 5 (0.79%) Aruba
15 5 (0.79%) Fortinet