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 5 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 264 459 262
Rank change year-on-year +195 -197 -39
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 510 297 648
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.02% 0.44% 1.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 0.53% 1.31%
Number of salaries quoted 153 141 359
10th Percentile £40,000 £48,750 £59,100
25th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £71,925
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £80,000 £82,500
Median % change year-on-year - -3.03% -2.94%
75th Percentile £108,750 £97,500 £95,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £110,000 £117,289
UK excluding London median annual salary £63,840 £80,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year -20.20% +0.46% +9.84%

All Process and 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 43,586 55,994 49,616
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 87.08% 82.59% 93.89%
Number of salaries quoted 26,170 29,448 38,129
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,750 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,532 £45,000 £43,992
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,250 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.58% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,750 £54,063 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.53% +2.98% -

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 5 November 2025.

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 5 November 2025. 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 +251 478 £80,000 +2.56% 1,128
London +198 343 £100,000 +18.79% 662
UK excluding London +80 141 £63,840 -20.20% 784
Work from Home +54 81 £65,000 -18.75% 509
South East +85 67 £35,000 -54.84% 505
North of England +18 23 £65,000 +8.33% 113
North West +44 19 £62,500 +2.04% 65
Scotland -18 15 £69,750 -30.25% 48
Midlands +43 14 £100,000 +53.85% 36
South West +46 10 £61,920 -22.60% 40
West Midlands +38 10 £67,500 +3.85% 27
East of England +11 9 £45,500 -49.30% 22
Yorkshire +3 4 £85,000 +54.55% 23
East Midlands +17 2 £100,000 +50.94% 9
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 7
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 7

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 (2.75%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.18%) nginx
2 6 (1.18%) WordPress
3 5 (0.98%) CMS
4 4 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.78%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.39%) CICS
5 2 (0.39%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.39%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.20%) Confluence
6 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (2.16%) Maya
4 7 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.98%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.78%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.78%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.59%) Elementor
8 2 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.39%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 32 (6.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (1.37%) Endur
4 6 (1.18%) SAP SCM
5 4 (0.78%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (0.78%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.59%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.59%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.59%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.59%) SAP IBP
6 3 (0.59%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.59%) SAP PP
7 2 (0.39%) SAP APO
7 2 (0.39%) SAP FSCM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP MM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 2 (0.39%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.39%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 117 (22.94%) Azure
2 96 (18.82%) AWS
3 37 (7.25%) GCP
4 33 (6.47%) SaaS
5 25 (4.90%) Amazon Bedrock
5 25 (4.90%) Vertex AI
6 22 (4.31%) Power Platform
7 14 (2.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 14 (2.75%) Cloud Computing
7 14 (2.75%) GitHub
8 13 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.55%) Snowflake
9 10 (1.96%) Serverless
10 9 (1.76%) OCI
11 6 (1.18%) Azure Machine Learning
11 6 (1.18%) IaaS
11 6 (1.18%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.98%) Google Ads
12 5 (0.98%) Microsoft 365
12 5 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.57%) DNS
2 6 (1.18%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 6 (1.18%) Network Security
3 1 (0.20%) BGP
3 1 (0.20%) Firewall
3 1 (0.20%) LAN
3 1 (0.20%) MPLS
3 1 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.20%) SSH
3 1 (0.20%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.20%) WAN
3 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (7.25%) Data Lake
2 29 (5.69%) NoSQL
3 28 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (5.10%) Metadata
5 21 (4.12%) Power BI
6 17 (3.33%) Big Data
7 14 (2.75%) Hadoop
8 13 (2.55%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (1.18%) Tableau
10 5 (0.98%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.78%) DataStage
11 4 (0.78%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.78%) QlikView
12 3 (0.59%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.59%) Looker
12 3 (0.59%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.59%) SQL Server
13 2 (0.39%) DB2
13 2 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
14 1 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 15 (2.94%) ERwin
2 11 (2.16%) JIRA
3 7 (1.37%) GitLab
4 4 (0.78%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.78%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.59%) eCATT
5 3 (0.59%) MLflow
6 1 (0.20%) Git
6 1 (0.20%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.20%) Vite
6 1 (0.20%) WaveMaker
General
1 177 (34.71%) Social Skills
2 173 (33.92%) Analytical Skills
3 162 (31.76%) Law
4 160 (31.37%) Finance
5 106 (20.78%) Marketing
6 51 (10.00%) Games
7 50 (9.80%) Influencing Skills
7 50 (9.80%) Retail
8 43 (8.43%) Presentation Skills
9 39 (7.65%) Banking
10 30 (5.88%) Public Sector
11 24 (4.71%) Legal
12 21 (4.12%) Advertising
13 18 (3.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 18 (3.53%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (2.55%) Manufacturing
15 10 (1.96%) Publishing
16 8 (1.57%) Billing
16 8 (1.57%) Dutch Language
16 8 (1.57%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 129 (25.29%) Senior
2 91 (17.84%) Lead
3 81 (15.88%) Architect
4 63 (12.35%) Consultant
5 41 (8.04%) Senior Consultant
5 41 (8.04%) Solutions Architect
6 27 (5.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 25 (4.90%) Gen AI Consultant
8 23 (4.51%) Account Executive
9 21 (4.12%) Lead Architect
10 20 (3.92%) Product Lead
11 18 (3.53%) Senior Architect
12 17 (3.33%) Data Architect
12 17 (3.33%) ServiceNow Architect
13 16 (3.14%) Data Scientist
13 16 (3.14%) IT Manager
13 16 (3.14%) Marketing Manager
13 16 (3.14%) Senior Solutions Architect
14 15 (2.94%) Senior Manager
15 12 (2.35%) Account Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (5.10%) LangChain
2 16 (3.14%) React
3 15 (2.94%) REST
4 13 (2.55%) Kafka
5 10 (1.96%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.57%) .NET
7 7 (1.37%) Vue
8 6 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (0.98%) ASP.NET
9 5 (0.98%) Hugging Face
9 5 (0.98%) JSON
9 5 (0.98%) XML
10 4 (0.78%) Middleware
11 3 (0.59%) .NET Framework
11 3 (0.59%) SAP Fiori
11 3 (0.59%) SAPUI5
12 2 (0.39%) CSS
12 2 (0.39%) Node.js
12 2 (0.39%) PyTorch
12 2 (0.39%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 49 (9.61%) Algorithms
2 44 (8.63%) Analytical Mindset
3 41 (8.04%) Product Ownership
4 38 (7.45%) Legacy Systems
5 30 (5.88%) Self-Motivation
6 27 (5.29%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (4.90%) FMCG
7 25 (4.90%) Virtual Team
8 19 (3.73%) Onboarding
9 18 (3.53%) Life Science
9 18 (3.53%) Management Information System
10 17 (3.33%) Social Media
11 16 (3.14%) Cloud Native
12 13 (2.55%) Blog
12 13 (2.55%) Public Cloud
13 12 (2.35%) Digital Media
14 11 (2.16%) Data Structures
15 8 (1.57%) Blockchain
15 8 (1.57%) Web Conferencing
16 7 (1.37%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.20%) Android
1 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.20%) Linux
1 1 (0.20%) Solaris
1 1 (0.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (39.41%) AI
2 193 (37.84%) Roadmaps
3 191 (37.45%) Analytics
4 155 (30.39%) Agile
5 133 (26.08%) Machine Learning
6 120 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
7 104 (20.39%) Business Strategy
8 95 (18.63%) Decision-Making
9 91 (17.84%) Computer Science
10 89 (17.45%) Business Development
11 83 (16.27%) Stakeholder Management
12 81 (15.88%) Data Science
13 76 (14.90%) DevOps
14 75 (14.71%) Project Management
15 74 (14.51%) Generative AI
15 74 (14.51%) Mentoring
16 73 (14.31%) IT Strategy
17 57 (11.18%) Coaching
18 56 (10.98%) B2B
19 55 (10.78%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 63 (12.35%) Python
2 31 (6.08%) SQL
3 20 (3.92%) JavaScript
4 10 (1.96%) Java
5 6 (1.18%) C#
6 4 (0.78%) C++
6 4 (0.78%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.39%) Bash
7 2 (0.39%) Scala
8 1 (0.20%) Bicep
8 1 (0.20%) Bourne shell
8 1 (0.20%) C-shell
8 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.20%) Perl
8 1 (0.20%) R
8 1 (0.20%) Ruby
8 1 (0.20%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 179 (35.10%) Degree
2 69 (13.53%) Master's Degree
3 61 (11.96%) Computer Science Degree
4 52 (10.20%) PhD
5 16 (3.14%) Security Cleared
6 11 (2.16%) SC Cleared
7 9 (1.76%) Azure Certification
7 9 (1.76%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (1.57%) PMI Certification
8 8 (1.57%) PMP
9 7 (1.37%) CISSP
9 7 (1.37%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.18%) CCNA
10 6 (1.18%) CCNP
10 6 (1.18%) SAP Certification
11 5 (0.98%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.98%) CISM
11 5 (0.98%) MBA
12 4 (0.78%) APMG
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (6.08%) QA
2 30 (5.88%) Data Quality
3 22 (4.31%) GDPR
4 15 (2.94%) GxP
5 10 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 10 (1.96%) PMO
6 8 (1.57%) SLA
7 7 (1.37%) EMIR
8 4 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.59%) NIST
9 3 (0.59%) P3O
10 2 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.39%) GRC
10 2 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.39%) WCAG
11 1 (0.20%) GMP
11 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 7 (1.37%) Docker
2 2 (0.39%) RACF
3 1 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 26 (5.10%) Terraform
2 14 (2.75%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.98%) Ansible
4 3 (0.59%) Grafana
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle ZFS
5 1 (0.20%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 47 (9.22%) Google
2 39 (7.65%) SAP
3 34 (6.67%) Microsoft
4 26 (5.10%) Databricks
5 22 (4.31%) Oracle
6 20 (3.92%) ServiceNow
7 18 (3.53%) Adobe
8 15 (2.94%) Dell
9 10 (1.96%) TikTok
10 9 (1.76%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.57%) Foundry
12 7 (1.37%) F5
12 7 (1.37%) OpenLink
13 6 (1.18%) IBM
13 6 (1.18%) Palantir
13 6 (1.18%) Salesforce
14 5 (0.98%) HubSpot
14 5 (0.98%) Splunk
15 4 (0.78%) Facebook
15 4 (0.78%) Informatica