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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 281 371
Rank change year-on-year -12 +90 -112
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 591 478 683
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.64% 1.11% 0.70%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.19% 0.82%
Number of salaries quoted 232 134 441
10th Percentile £42,750 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £62,500 £53,150
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £84,590 £79,632
Median % change year-on-year -5.43% +6.23% -6.32%
75th Percentile £97,500 £100,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £111,250 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £80,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year -12.50% - +14.29%

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 68,525 40,020 82,895
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.79% 93.31% 84.38%
Number of salaries quoted 44,515 20,986 59,915
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,000 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,839 £41,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £59,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% +7.27% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,645 £50,000
% change year-on-year +1.66% +3.29% -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 24 May 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 24 May 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 -17 530 £80,000 -4.76% 423
London +18 336 £80,000 -7.25% 300
UK excluding London -57 193 £70,000 -12.50% 157
Work from Home +14 120 £65,000 -23.53% 175
North of England -24 66 £85,000 -5.36% 43
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 7
North West +3 43 £87,500 -7.54% 30
South East -82 37 £37,500 -42.31% 43
Midlands -26 19 £80,000 +77.78% 21
Yorkshire -39 17 £83,420 +4.28% 9
West Midlands -38 12 £80,000 +77.78% 12
Scotland -9 11 £80,000 -15.79% 16
South West -55 11 £56,000 -32.12% 15
East Midlands - 7 £50,000 - 9
North East -38 6 £71,250 +22.32% 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 (2.37%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.02%) IIS
5 5 (0.85%) CMS
6 4 (0.68%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.68%) Confluence
7 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.34%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.17%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.68%) Adobe XD
3 4 (0.68%) InVision
3 4 (0.68%) Maya
3 4 (0.68%) Sketch
4 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 18 (3.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.02%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.68%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.51%) SAP MDG-BP
5 2 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.17%) Endur
6 1 (0.17%) Magento
6 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (18.44%) AWS
2 71 (12.01%) Azure
3 56 (9.48%) SaaS
4 46 (7.78%) GCP
5 40 (6.77%) Snowflake
6 18 (3.05%) AWS CloudFormation
7 15 (2.54%) Serverless
8 9 (1.52%) Cloud Computing
8 9 (1.52%) PaaS
8 9 (1.52%) Power Platform
9 7 (1.18%) GitHub
9 7 (1.18%) SuccessFactors
10 6 (1.02%) dbt
10 6 (1.02%) OCI
11 5 (0.85%) Azure AI
11 5 (0.85%) Azure Machine Learning
11 5 (0.85%) Matillion
11 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Purview
12 4 (0.68%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (0.68%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.71%) Firewall
2 7 (1.18%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.18%) Network Security
2 7 (1.18%) SD-WAN
2 7 (1.18%) WAN
2 7 (1.18%) Wireless
3 6 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.02%) WebEx
4 5 (0.85%) Broadband
4 5 (0.85%) LAN
5 4 (0.68%) Cisco Wireless
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%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.74%) Data Lake
3 17 (2.88%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.86%) Big Data
5 7 (1.18%) Power BI
5 7 (1.18%) Tableau
6 6 (1.02%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.85%) Data Mining
7 5 (0.85%) Metadata
8 4 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.51%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.34%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.17%) BigQuery
11 1 (0.17%) InterSystems Cache
11 1 (0.17%) Looker
11 1 (0.17%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 13 (2.20%) Cucumber
2 12 (2.03%) GitLab
3 6 (1.02%) MLflow
4 4 (0.68%) Axure RP
4 4 (0.68%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Git
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
1 208 (35.19%) Finance
2 150 (25.38%) Social Skills
3 107 (18.10%) Analytical Skills
4 104 (17.60%) Marketing
5 81 (13.71%) Public Sector
6 63 (10.66%) Presentation Skills
7 57 (9.64%) Retail
8 39 (6.60%) Legal
9 38 (6.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 35 (5.92%) Banking
11 28 (4.74%) Law
12 27 (4.57%) Influencing Skills
13 23 (3.89%) Financial Institution
14 18 (3.05%) Brand Awareness
15 17 (2.88%) Games
15 17 (2.88%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (2.71%) Aerospace
17 12 (2.03%) Manufacturing
18 11 (1.86%) Organisational Skills
19 10 (1.69%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 142 (24.03%) Senior
2 92 (15.57%) Architect
3 88 (14.89%) Consultant
4 70 (11.84%) Lead
5 61 (10.32%) Account Executive
6 57 (9.64%) Sales Executive
7 40 (6.77%) Business Development Executive
8 39 (6.60%) Senior Sales Executive
9 38 (6.43%) Senior Manager
10 34 (5.75%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.58%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.58%) Sales Account Executive
12 29 (4.91%) Business Architect
13 26 (4.40%) Senior Consultant
14 25 (4.23%) Business Consultant
14 25 (4.23%) Senior Architect
15 24 (4.06%) Data Management Specialist
15 24 (4.06%) Product Specialist
16 22 (3.72%) Business Manager
16 22 (3.72%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.21%) Kafka
2 18 (3.05%) Spring
2 18 (3.05%) Spring Boot
3 6 (1.02%) REST
3 6 (1.02%) SOAP
3 6 (1.02%) XML
4 5 (0.85%) CSS
4 5 (0.85%) HTML
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.85%) Play Framework
5 4 (0.68%) Flutter
5 4 (0.68%) PyTorch
5 4 (0.68%) React
5 4 (0.68%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.68%) VML
6 3 (0.51%) LangChain
6 3 (0.51%) PySpark
7 2 (0.34%) LangGraph
7 2 (0.34%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.29%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.45%) Enterprise Software
3 26 (4.40%) Life Science
4 25 (4.23%) Blog
5 19 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (3.21%) e-Learning
6 18 (3.05%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.05%) Self-Motivation
7 17 (2.88%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.88%) Product Ownership
8 14 (2.37%) Web Conferencing
9 13 (2.20%) Onboarding
10 12 (2.03%) Legacy Applications
10 12 (2.03%) Podcast
10 12 (2.03%) Public Cloud
11 11 (1.86%) Social Media
12 10 (1.69%) Algorithms
12 10 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.52%) Data Fabric
13 9 (1.52%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.51%) Windows
2 2 (0.34%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (31.81%) Business Development
2 184 (31.13%) AI
3 175 (29.61%) Decision-Making
4 145 (24.53%) Mentoring
5 124 (20.98%) Analytics
6 121 (20.47%) Roadmaps
7 105 (17.77%) Agile
8 83 (14.04%) Business Strategy
9 82 (13.87%) Problem-Solving
10 78 (13.20%) Workshop Facilitation
11 77 (13.03%) Stakeholder Management
12 66 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
13 65 (11.00%) Cybersecurity
14 63 (10.66%) Strategic Thinking
15 60 (10.15%) DevOps
16 59 (9.98%) B2B
17 56 (9.48%) Risk Management
17 56 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 55 (9.31%) Use Case
19 54 (9.14%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 48 (8.12%) Python
2 47 (7.95%) Java
3 27 (4.57%) SQL
4 14 (2.37%) R
5 5 (0.85%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.85%) Scala
6 4 (0.68%) C#
6 4 (0.68%) Go
6 4 (0.68%) JavaScript
7 3 (0.51%) ABAP
8 2 (0.34%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 159 (26.90%) Degree
2 73 (12.35%) Security Cleared
3 38 (6.43%) SC Cleared
4 35 (5.92%) Master's Degree
5 23 (3.89%) CISSP
6 22 (3.72%) CISM
7 19 (3.21%) AWS Certification
8 16 (2.71%) PhD
9 15 (2.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 13 (2.20%) Azure Certification
10 13 (2.20%) DV Cleared
11 12 (2.03%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 11 (1.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
12 11 (1.86%) DBS Check
12 11 (1.86%) MBA
13 9 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (1.52%) CRISC
14 7 (1.18%) GSEC
15 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.58%) GRC
2 23 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.72%) NIST
4 21 (3.55%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.37%) Data Quality
6 13 (2.20%) JSP 440
7 11 (1.86%) GDPR
7 11 (1.86%) QA
8 10 (1.69%) GxP
9 9 (1.52%) EU AI Act
10 8 (1.35%) Basel III
11 7 (1.18%) Government Security Classifications
11 7 (1.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (1.18%) SLA
12 6 (1.02%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (1.02%) PCI DSS
13 4 (0.68%) WCAG
14 3 (0.51%) IFRS
15 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
15 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 9 (1.52%) Docker
2 4 (0.68%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 12 (2.03%) Kubernetes
1 12 (2.03%) Terraform
2 8 (1.35%) Ansible
3 5 (0.85%) Puppet
4 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.34%) Argo
5 2 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.34%) RSA Archer
5 2 (0.34%) Salt
6 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.17%) Consul
6 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (0.17%) Grafana
6 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.24%) Dell
2 39 (6.60%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.43%) Databricks
3 38 (6.43%) SAP
4 25 (4.23%) Informatica
5 24 (4.06%) Denodo
5 24 (4.06%) Teradata
6 23 (3.89%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.55%) Salesforce
8 18 (3.05%) Google
8 18 (3.05%) Oracle
9 15 (2.54%) Foundry
10 14 (2.37%) Palantir
11 13 (2.20%) HubSpot
12 7 (1.18%) Cognizant
12 7 (1.18%) Workday
13 6 (1.02%) Aruba
13 6 (1.02%) Cisco
13 6 (1.02%) Fortinet
13 6 (1.02%) Juniper