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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 291 285 347
Rank change year-on-year -6 +62 -86
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 555 418 745
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 206 137 488
10th Percentile £39,125 £46,500 £42,850
25th Percentile £61,250 £68,750 £60,563
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +9.38% -6.98%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £88,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year -20.90% +10.63% +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 63,052 38,055 78,562
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.14% 93.05% 86.27%
Number of salaries quoted 38,936 22,478 58,228
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,237
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,125 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £56,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £54,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -7.41% +8.00% -7.94%

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 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 8 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 +7 488 £80,000 -8.57% 403
London +64 315 £86,500 -3.89% 243
UK excluding London -70 176 £70,000 -20.90% 286
Work from Home -8 107 £68,750 -22.74% 124
North of England -62 48 £80,000 -15.47% 54
East of England +1 46 £70,000 -28.02% 9
South East -72 44 £47,500 -33.33% 157
North West -42 38 £80,000 -15.47% 26
Scotland -31 13 £80,000 -20.00% 11
Midlands -45 12 £72,500 -3.33% 30
South West -33 10 £47,000 -47.78% 22
West Midlands -10 9 £75,000 - 25
Yorkshire -52 8 £90,000 +20.00% 21
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 5
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 3
North East -27 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 10 (1.80%) Palantir Foundry
2 8 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.08%) IIS
4 5 (0.90%) CMS
4 5 (0.90%) WordPress
5 4 (0.72%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
6 3 (0.54%) Confluence
7 1 (0.18%) Apache
7 1 (0.18%) Drupal
7 1 (0.18%) nginx
7 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 14 (2.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 8 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.90%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.90%) InVision
3 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.90%) Sketch
4 4 (0.72%) Maya
5 3 (0.54%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.54%) Elementor
5 3 (0.54%) Photoshop
6 2 (0.36%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.18%) Siemens NX
7 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 16 (2.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.54%) Elite 3E
3 3 (0.54%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.36%) SAP SCM
4 2 (0.36%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.18%) Endur
5 1 (0.18%) Magento
5 1 (0.18%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.18%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.18%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-F
5 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-M
5 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-S
5 1 (0.18%) SAP PLM
5 1 (0.18%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 87 (15.68%) AWS
2 62 (11.17%) Azure
3 49 (8.83%) SaaS
4 44 (7.93%) GCP
5 43 (7.75%) Snowflake
6 9 (1.62%) AWS CloudFormation
6 9 (1.62%) Cloud Computing
6 9 (1.62%) GitHub
6 9 (1.62%) Power Platform
6 9 (1.62%) Serverless
7 7 (1.26%) Dynamics 365
7 7 (1.26%) SuccessFactors
8 6 (1.08%) Azure AI
8 6 (1.08%) dbt
8 6 (1.08%) OCI
9 5 (0.90%) Azure DevOps
9 5 (0.90%) Azure Machine Learning
9 5 (0.90%) Figma
9 5 (0.90%) Google Ads
9 5 (0.90%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.34%) Firewall
2 7 (1.26%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.26%) Network Security
3 4 (0.72%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.72%) WAN
3 4 (0.72%) Wireless
4 3 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.54%) WebEx
4 3 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.36%) Broadband
5 2 (0.36%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.36%) LAN
5 2 (0.36%) SSL
5 2 (0.36%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.18%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.18%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.18%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.18%) WLAN
6 1 (0.18%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (6.31%) Data Warehouse
2 30 (5.41%) Data Lake
3 12 (2.16%) NoSQL
4 9 (1.62%) Tableau
5 7 (1.26%) Big Data
5 7 (1.26%) Metadata
5 7 (1.26%) Power BI
6 6 (1.08%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.90%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.72%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.72%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.54%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.36%) DataStage
10 2 (0.36%) Looker
10 2 (0.36%) QlikView
10 2 (0.36%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.36%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.36%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.18%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (1.08%) GitLab
1 6 (1.08%) MLflow
2 5 (0.90%) Axure RP
2 5 (0.90%) Cucumber
3 4 (0.72%) Git
3 4 (0.72%) JIRA
4 3 (0.54%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.36%) ER Studio
5 2 (0.36%) ERwin
5 2 (0.36%) PowerDesigner
6 1 (0.18%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.18%) Gatling
6 1 (0.18%) JMeter
6 1 (0.18%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.18%) Selenium
6 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.18%) Vagrant
General
1 185 (33.33%) Finance
2 134 (24.14%) Social Skills
3 96 (17.30%) Marketing
4 90 (16.22%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (12.25%) Presentation Skills
6 67 (12.07%) Public Sector
7 52 (9.37%) Retail
8 37 (6.67%) Legal
9 30 (5.41%) Banking
9 30 (5.41%) Influencing Skills
10 28 (5.05%) Pharmaceutical
11 27 (4.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 27 (4.86%) Law
12 20 (3.60%) Financial Institution
13 17 (3.06%) Games
14 16 (2.88%) Aerospace
15 14 (2.52%) Brand Awareness
16 11 (1.98%) Manufacturing
16 11 (1.98%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (1.80%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 132 (23.78%) Senior
2 82 (14.77%) Architect
3 78 (14.05%) Consultant
4 69 (12.43%) Lead
5 61 (10.99%) Account Executive
5 61 (10.99%) Sales Executive
6 43 (7.75%) Senior Sales Executive
7 38 (6.85%) Business Development Executive
8 34 (6.13%) Senior Account Executive
9 33 (5.95%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (5.95%) Sales Account Executive
10 28 (5.05%) Business Architect
10 28 (5.05%) Senior Manager
11 26 (4.68%) Product Specialist
12 25 (4.50%) Senior Architect
13 24 (4.32%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (4.32%) Senior Consultant
14 22 (3.96%) Business Consultant
15 20 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
16 19 (3.42%) Business Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (2.16%) Kafka
2 11 (1.98%) Spring
2 11 (1.98%) Spring Boot
3 7 (1.26%) CSS
3 7 (1.26%) HTML
4 6 (1.08%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.08%) REST
4 6 (1.08%) SOAP
4 6 (1.08%) TensorFlow
5 5 (0.90%) OAuth
5 5 (0.90%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.90%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.90%) React
6 4 (0.72%) Flutter
6 4 (0.72%) LangChain
6 4 (0.72%) XML
7 3 (0.54%) Hugging Face
7 3 (0.54%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.54%) PySpark
7 3 (0.54%) VML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (6.31%) Life Science
2 32 (5.77%) Blog
3 29 (5.23%) Cloud Native
4 26 (4.68%) Enterprise Software
4 26 (4.68%) Self-Motivation
5 16 (2.88%) Social Media
6 15 (2.70%) AI Agents
6 15 (2.70%) Web Conferencing
7 14 (2.52%) Management Information System
7 14 (2.52%) Onboarding
8 12 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
8 12 (2.16%) e-Learning
8 12 (2.16%) Product Ownership
9 11 (1.98%) Podcast
10 10 (1.80%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.62%) Data Fabric
12 8 (1.44%) Security Posture
12 8 (1.44%) Virtual Team
13 7 (1.26%) Legacy Applications
13 7 (1.26%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.54%) Windows
2 2 (0.36%) Linux
3 1 (0.18%) Android
3 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.18%) VMS
3 1 (0.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (33.69%) AI
2 165 (29.73%) Decision-Making
3 161 (29.01%) Business Development
4 130 (23.42%) Analytics
5 116 (20.90%) Roadmaps
6 105 (18.92%) Mentoring
7 103 (18.56%) Agile
8 75 (13.51%) Workshop Facilitation
9 74 (13.33%) Business Strategy
10 73 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
11 68 (12.25%) B2B
12 66 (11.89%) Stakeholder Management
12 66 (11.89%) Strategic Thinking
13 65 (11.71%) Cybersecurity
13 65 (11.71%) Use Case
14 61 (10.99%) Generative AI
15 60 (10.81%) Data Science
16 55 (9.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 54 (9.73%) Machine Learning
18 49 (8.83%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 37 (6.67%) Python
2 35 (6.31%) Java
3 22 (3.96%) SQL
4 6 (1.08%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.08%) R
5 5 (0.90%) C#
5 5 (0.90%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.90%) Scala
6 4 (0.72%) Go
7 3 (0.54%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.18%) ABAP
8 1 (0.18%) Bash
8 1 (0.18%) PHP
8 1 (0.18%) Ruby
8 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 160 (28.83%) Degree
2 65 (11.71%) Security Cleared
3 43 (7.75%) Master's Degree
4 42 (7.57%) SC Cleared
5 25 (4.50%) PhD
6 20 (3.60%) CISSP
7 18 (3.24%) CISM
8 16 (2.88%) Azure Certification
9 12 (2.16%) AWS Certification
9 12 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
9 12 (2.16%) DBS Check
10 10 (1.80%) DV Cleared
11 9 (1.62%) CRISC
11 9 (1.62%) MBA
12 7 (1.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 7 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 7 (1.26%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (1.26%) GSEC
12 7 (1.26%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.50%) Accessibility
2 24 (4.32%) GRC
3 19 (3.42%) GxP
3 19 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (3.42%) NIST
4 12 (2.16%) Data Quality
4 12 (2.16%) QA
5 9 (1.62%) EU AI Act
5 9 (1.62%) JSP 440
6 7 (1.26%) GDPR
6 7 (1.26%) Government Security Classifications
6 7 (1.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 6 (1.08%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (0.90%) SLA
8 5 (0.90%) WCAG
9 3 (0.54%) IFRS
9 3 (0.54%) NCSC
9 3 (0.54%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.36%) GAAP
10 2 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 9 (1.62%) Docker
2 4 (0.72%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (2.88%) Terraform
2 13 (2.34%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.62%) Ansible
4 5 (0.90%) Puppet
5 3 (0.54%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.36%) Argo
6 2 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.36%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.36%) Salt
7 1 (0.18%) Consul
7 1 (0.18%) Grafana
7 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (17.30%) Dell
2 39 (7.03%) Databricks
3 37 (6.67%) SAP
4 35 (6.31%) Microsoft
5 28 (5.05%) Google
6 27 (4.86%) Informatica
7 24 (4.32%) Denodo
7 24 (4.32%) Teradata
8 20 (3.60%) Oracle
9 18 (3.24%) ServiceNow
10 16 (2.88%) Salesforce
11 14 (2.52%) HubSpot
12 12 (2.16%) Cognizant
13 11 (1.98%) Foundry
14 10 (1.80%) Adobe
14 10 (1.80%) Palantir
15 7 (1.26%) IBM
15 7 (1.26%) Workday
16 6 (1.08%) OpenAI
17 5 (0.90%) BT