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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 282 300 342
Rank change year-on-year +18 +42 -83
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 536 411 748
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.68% 1.01% 0.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 1.08% 0.97%
Number of salaries quoted 194 132 492
10th Percentile £40,750 £47,750 £42,550
25th Percentile £61,250 £71,899 £61,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,991 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.08% +9.99% -8.57%
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 60,831 38,033 77,482
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.64% 93.07% 86.50%
Number of salaries quoted 37,418 22,319 57,741
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%

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 1 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 1 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 +16 469 £80,000 -8.57% 403
London +57 304 £86,500 -3.89% 243
UK excluding London -80 168 £70,000 -20.90% 286
Work from Home -14 104 £80,000 -10.10% 124
East of England +13 47 £65,050 -33.11% 9
North of England -62 47 £80,000 -15.47% 54
South East -74 39 £51,250 -26.79% 157
North West -30 37 £77,500 -18.11% 26
Scotland -27 14 £80,000 -20.00% 11
Midlands -33 10 £75,000 - 30
South West -30 9 £44,250 -50.83% 22
Yorkshire -50 8 £90,000 +20.00% 21
West Midlands -20 7 £77,500 +3.33% 25
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 5
North East -27 2 - - 8
Wales - 2 £42,000 - 3

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 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
1 8 (1.49%) Palantir Foundry
2 6 (1.12%) IIS
3 5 (0.93%) WordPress
4 4 (0.75%) CMS
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%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.19%) nginx
6 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
Applications
1 14 (2.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.93%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.93%) InVision
3 5 (0.93%) Maya
3 5 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.93%) Sketch
4 3 (0.56%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.56%) Elementor
4 3 (0.56%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.19%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (2.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.75%) Endur
4 3 (0.56%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.56%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.37%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.37%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.19%) Magento
6 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.19%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.19%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.19%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-F
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.19%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 85 (15.86%) AWS
2 62 (11.57%) Azure
3 47 (8.77%) SaaS
4 45 (8.40%) Snowflake
5 41 (7.65%) GCP
6 10 (1.87%) GitHub
7 9 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (1.68%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.49%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.31%) OCI
9 7 (1.31%) SuccessFactors
10 6 (1.12%) dbt
10 6 (1.12%) Serverless
11 5 (0.93%) Figma
11 5 (0.93%) Google Ads
11 5 (0.93%) Matillion
12 4 (0.75%) Alation
12 4 (0.75%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.24%) Firewall
2 7 (1.31%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.31%) Network Security
3 4 (0.75%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.75%) WAN
3 4 (0.75%) 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%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.19%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.19%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.19%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.19%) SSL
6 1 (0.19%) WLAN
6 1 (0.19%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (7.09%) Data Warehouse
2 31 (5.78%) Data Lake
3 12 (2.24%) NoSQL
4 11 (2.05%) Tableau
5 9 (1.68%) Metadata
6 8 (1.49%) Big Data
6 8 (1.49%) Power BI
7 6 (1.12%) BigQuery
7 6 (1.12%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.93%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.75%) DataStage
9 4 (0.75%) QlikView
9 4 (0.75%) SAP HANA
10 3 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.37%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.37%) Looker
11 2 (0.37%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (0.37%) Semantic Layer
11 2 (0.37%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 6 (1.12%) GitLab
2 5 (0.93%) Axure RP
2 5 (0.93%) Cucumber
2 5 (0.93%) MLflow
3 4 (0.75%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.75%) ERwin
3 4 (0.75%) JIRA
3 4 (0.75%) PowerDesigner
4 2 (0.37%) Git
4 2 (0.37%) Jenkins
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
1 184 (34.33%) Finance
2 124 (23.13%) Social Skills
3 89 (16.60%) Analytical Skills
4 87 (16.23%) Marketing
5 66 (12.31%) Presentation Skills
6 64 (11.94%) Public Sector
7 48 (8.96%) Retail
8 38 (7.09%) Legal
9 33 (6.16%) Law
10 32 (5.97%) Banking
11 28 (5.22%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (4.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 24 (4.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 20 (3.73%) Financial Institution
14 20 (3.73%) Games
15 16 (2.99%) Aerospace
16 10 (1.87%) Publishing
17 9 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (1.68%) Telecoms
18 8 (1.49%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 125 (23.32%) Senior
2 78 (14.55%) Architect
3 75 (13.99%) Consultant
4 71 (13.25%) Lead
5 62 (11.57%) Sales Executive
6 60 (11.19%) Account Executive
7 44 (8.21%) Senior Sales Executive
8 38 (7.09%) Business Development Executive
9 33 (6.16%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (6.16%) Sales Account Executive
9 33 (6.16%) Senior Account Executive
10 26 (4.85%) Business Architect
10 26 (4.85%) Product Specialist
11 25 (4.66%) Senior Manager
12 24 (4.48%) Data Management Specialist
13 23 (4.29%) Senior Architect
14 22 (4.10%) Senior Consultant
15 21 (3.92%) Business Consultant
16 20 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
17 18 (3.36%) Business Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.05%) Spring
1 11 (2.05%) Spring Boot
2 10 (1.87%) Kafka
3 7 (1.31%) CSS
3 7 (1.31%) HTML
4 6 (1.12%) REST
4 6 (1.12%) SOAP
5 5 (0.93%) OAuth
5 5 (0.93%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.93%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.93%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.93%) React
5 5 (0.93%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.75%) Flutter
7 3 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.56%) XML
8 2 (0.37%) PySpark
8 2 (0.37%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.37%) VML
8 2 (0.37%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.16%) Life Science
2 30 (5.60%) Blog
3 27 (5.04%) Cloud Native
3 27 (5.04%) Self-Motivation
4 26 (4.85%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (2.99%) Management Information System
6 14 (2.61%) Onboarding
6 14 (2.61%) Social Media
7 13 (2.43%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.43%) Web Conferencing
8 12 (2.24%) Algorithms
8 12 (2.24%) e-Learning
9 11 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (1.87%) Podcast
11 8 (1.49%) Data Fabric
11 8 (1.49%) Product Ownership
11 8 (1.49%) Security Posture
11 8 (1.49%) Virtual Team
12 7 (1.31%) NHS
13 6 (1.12%) 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
1 188 (35.07%) AI
2 165 (30.78%) Decision-Making
3 156 (29.10%) Business Development
4 135 (25.19%) Analytics
5 111 (20.71%) Roadmaps
6 102 (19.03%) Mentoring
7 100 (18.66%) Agile
8 75 (13.99%) Business Strategy
9 69 (12.87%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (12.50%) Workshop Facilitation
11 66 (12.31%) Cybersecurity
12 63 (11.75%) Strategic Thinking
13 62 (11.57%) B2B
13 62 (11.57%) Data Science
13 62 (11.57%) Stakeholder Management
13 62 (11.57%) Use Case
14 59 (11.01%) Generative AI
15 55 (10.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 53 (9.89%) Machine Learning
17 50 (9.33%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 36 (6.72%) Python
2 33 (6.16%) Java
3 22 (4.10%) SQL
4 6 (1.12%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.12%) R
5 5 (0.93%) C#
5 5 (0.93%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.93%) Scala
6 4 (0.75%) 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
1 165 (30.78%) Degree
2 63 (11.75%) Security Cleared
3 47 (8.77%) Master's Degree
4 41 (7.65%) SC Cleared
5 27 (5.04%) PhD
6 20 (3.73%) CISSP
7 19 (3.54%) CISM
8 18 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (2.80%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.61%) DBS Check
11 12 (2.24%) AWS Certification
12 10 (1.87%) CRISC
12 10 (1.87%) DV Cleared
13 9 (1.68%) MBA
14 7 (1.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 7 (1.31%) GSEC
14 7 (1.31%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 6 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 6 (1.12%) CISA
15 6 (1.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.29%) Accessibility
2 22 (4.10%) GRC
3 20 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 19 (3.54%) GxP
5 18 (3.36%) NIST
6 13 (2.43%) Data Quality
7 12 (2.24%) QA
8 9 (1.68%) EU AI Act
8 9 (1.68%) JSP 440
9 8 (1.49%) GDPR
10 7 (1.31%) Government Security Classifications
10 7 (1.31%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 6 (1.12%) Actionable Recommendations
12 5 (0.93%) WCAG
13 4 (0.75%) EMIR
13 4 (0.75%) SLA
14 3 (0.56%) NCSC
14 3 (0.56%) PCI DSS
15 2 (0.37%) IFRS
15 2 (0.37%) NIST 800
System Software
1 7 (1.31%) Docker
2 4 (0.75%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (2.99%) Terraform
2 8 (1.49%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.31%) Ansible
4 4 (0.75%) Puppet
5 2 (0.37%) Argo
5 2 (0.37%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.37%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.37%) RSA Archer
5 2 (0.37%) Salt
6 1 (0.19%) Consul
6 1 (0.19%) Grafana
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (17.91%) Dell
2 40 (7.46%) Databricks
3 33 (6.16%) SAP
4 30 (5.60%) Microsoft
5 29 (5.41%) Informatica
6 28 (5.22%) Google
7 24 (4.48%) Denodo
7 24 (4.48%) Teradata
8 21 (3.92%) Oracle
9 15 (2.80%) ServiceNow
10 13 (2.43%) HubSpot
11 11 (2.05%) Salesforce
12 10 (1.87%) Adobe
13 9 (1.68%) IBM
14 8 (1.49%) Foundry
14 8 (1.49%) Palantir
15 7 (1.31%) Workday
16 6 (1.12%) Cognizant
17 5 (0.93%) BT
18 4 (0.75%) OpenLink