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 19 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 256 464 260
Rank change year-on-year +208 -204 -41
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 527 299 714
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.43% 1.27%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.22% 0.52% 1.35%
Number of salaries quoted 150 146 391
10th Percentile £40,000 £50,000 £56,219
25th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £68,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £77,500 £80,000 £80,674
Median % change year-on-year -3.13% -0.84% -3.79%
75th Percentile £108,438 £94,688 £95,000
90th Percentile £122,500 £110,000 £117,236
UK excluding London median annual salary £64,420 £80,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year -19.48% +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 43,297 57,101 52,957
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 88.61% 82.22% 94.06%
Number of salaries quoted 24,595 30,556 40,535
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,750 £45,000 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,500 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.17% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,000 £54,000 £53,118
% change year-on-year -14.81% +1.66% +1.18%

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 19 October 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 19 October 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 +233 493 £77,500 -0.32% 794
London +196 347 £98,000 +22.50% 451
UK excluding London +99 156 £64,420 -19.48% 505
Work from Home +62 83 £65,000 -18.75% 381
South East +89 78 £35,000 -54.84% 305
North of England +25 25 £70,000 +16.67% 78
North West +27 18 £63,750 +4.08% 47
Midlands +26 17 £67,500 +3.85% 32
Scotland -10 16 £74,500 -25.50% 32
West Midlands +43 13 £65,000 - 24
South West +44 10 £61,920 -22.60% 41
Yorkshire +14 7 £85,000 +54.55% 20
East of England -8 7 £45,000 -49.72% 16
East Midlands +13 2 £100,000 +50.94% 8
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 2
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 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 14 (2.66%) Apache Spark
2 8 (1.52%) WordPress
3 7 (1.33%) CMS
4 6 (1.14%) nginx
5 4 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.76%) Confluence
5 4 (0.76%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.38%) CICS
6 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.38%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.19%) WebLogic
Applications
1 17 (3.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (2.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (2.09%) Maya
4 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.76%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.57%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.57%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe Illustrator
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.38%) Elementor
Business Applications
1 28 (5.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (1.33%) Endur
4 6 (1.14%) SAP SCM
5 4 (0.76%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.76%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (0.76%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.57%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.57%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.57%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.57%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.57%) SAP FSCM
6 3 (0.57%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.57%) SAP PP
7 2 (0.38%) SAP APO
7 2 (0.38%) SAP IBP
7 2 (0.38%) SAP MM
7 2 (0.38%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 2 (0.38%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.38%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 122 (23.15%) Azure
2 98 (18.60%) AWS
3 34 (6.45%) GCP
4 33 (6.26%) SaaS
5 25 (4.74%) Amazon Bedrock
5 25 (4.74%) Vertex AI
6 22 (4.17%) Power Platform
7 17 (3.23%) GitHub
8 14 (2.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 14 (2.66%) Cloud Computing
8 14 (2.66%) Snowflake
9 13 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (2.28%) Serverless
11 9 (1.71%) OCI
12 6 (1.14%) Azure Machine Learning
12 6 (1.14%) IaaS
12 6 (1.14%) OpenShift
13 5 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (0.95%) Google Gemini
13 5 (0.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.09%) DNS
2 6 (1.14%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 6 (1.14%) Network Security
3 1 (0.19%) BGP
3 1 (0.19%) Firewall
3 1 (0.19%) Internet
3 1 (0.19%) LAN
3 1 (0.19%) MPLS
3 1 (0.19%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.19%) SSH
3 1 (0.19%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.19%) WAN
3 1 (0.19%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (8.16%) Data Lake
2 30 (5.69%) NoSQL
3 28 (5.31%) Data Warehouse
4 25 (4.74%) Metadata
5 21 (3.98%) Power BI
6 18 (3.42%) Big Data
7 14 (2.66%) Hadoop
8 13 (2.47%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (1.14%) Tableau
10 4 (0.76%) BigQuery
10 4 (0.76%) DataStage
10 4 (0.76%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.76%) QlikView
11 3 (0.57%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.57%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.57%) SQL Server
12 2 (0.38%) DB2
12 2 (0.38%) Looker
12 2 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
13 1 (0.19%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 15 (2.85%) ERwin
2 13 (2.47%) JIRA
3 7 (1.33%) GitLab
4 4 (0.76%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.76%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.57%) eCATT
5 3 (0.57%) MLflow
6 1 (0.19%) Git
6 1 (0.19%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.19%) Vite
6 1 (0.19%) WaveMaker
General
1 190 (36.05%) Analytical Skills
2 187 (35.48%) Social Skills
3 175 (33.21%) Law
4 158 (29.98%) Finance
5 109 (20.68%) Marketing
6 55 (10.44%) Retail
7 52 (9.87%) Games
7 52 (9.87%) Influencing Skills
8 41 (7.78%) Banking
9 39 (7.40%) Presentation Skills
10 31 (5.88%) Public Sector
11 24 (4.55%) Legal
12 21 (3.98%) Advertising
13 18 (3.42%) Pharmaceutical
14 15 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (2.47%) Manufacturing
15 13 (2.47%) Publishing
16 8 (1.52%) Billing
16 8 (1.52%) Dutch Language
16 8 (1.52%) French Language
Job Titles
1 140 (26.57%) Senior
2 93 (17.65%) Lead
3 79 (14.99%) Architect
4 61 (11.57%) Consultant
5 44 (8.35%) Solutions Architect
6 41 (7.78%) Senior Consultant
7 27 (5.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 25 (4.74%) Gen AI Consultant
9 24 (4.55%) Account Executive
10 21 (3.98%) Lead Architect
10 21 (3.98%) Senior Architect
10 21 (3.98%) ServiceNow Architect
11 20 (3.80%) Product Lead
11 20 (3.80%) Senior Solutions Architect
12 16 (3.04%) Data Architect
12 16 (3.04%) Data Scientist
12 16 (3.04%) IT Manager
13 15 (2.85%) Marketing Manager
13 15 (2.85%) Senior Manager
14 12 (2.28%) Account Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (4.93%) LangChain
2 18 (3.42%) REST
3 16 (3.04%) React
4 13 (2.47%) Kafka
5 10 (1.90%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.52%) .NET
7 7 (1.33%) Vue
8 5 (0.95%) ASP.NET
8 5 (0.95%) CSS
8 5 (0.95%) Hugging Face
8 5 (0.95%) JSON
8 5 (0.95%) XML
9 4 (0.76%) Middleware
10 3 (0.57%) .NET Framework
10 3 (0.57%) Oracle Fusion
10 3 (0.57%) SAP Fiori
10 3 (0.57%) SAPUI5
10 3 (0.57%) SOAP
10 3 (0.57%) Web Services
11 2 (0.38%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 50 (9.49%) Analytical Mindset
2 49 (9.30%) Algorithms
3 42 (7.97%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (7.97%) Product Ownership
4 29 (5.50%) Self-Motivation
5 28 (5.31%) Enterprise Software
6 26 (4.93%) FMCG
7 24 (4.55%) Virtual Team
8 19 (3.61%) Social Media
9 18 (3.42%) Life Science
9 18 (3.42%) Management Information System
9 18 (3.42%) Onboarding
10 17 (3.23%) Cloud Native
11 14 (2.66%) Public Cloud
12 13 (2.47%) Digital Media
13 12 (2.28%) Blog
14 11 (2.09%) Data Structures
14 11 (2.09%) Web Conferencing
15 8 (1.52%) Blockchain
16 7 (1.33%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.19%) Linux
1 1 (0.19%) Solaris
1 1 (0.19%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (39.28%) Roadmaps
2 206 (39.09%) AI
3 199 (37.76%) Analytics
4 167 (31.69%) Agile
5 139 (26.38%) Machine Learning
6 136 (25.81%) Problem-Solving
7 111 (21.06%) Business Strategy
8 97 (18.41%) Decision-Making
9 95 (18.03%) Computer Science
10 90 (17.08%) Business Development
11 88 (16.70%) Data Science
12 87 (16.51%) Stakeholder Management
13 82 (15.56%) Project Management
14 78 (14.80%) DevOps
15 74 (14.04%) Mentoring
16 72 (13.66%) Generative AI
16 72 (13.66%) IT Strategy
17 65 (12.33%) Strategic Roadmap
18 63 (11.95%) Coaching
19 60 (11.39%) B2B
Programming Languages
1 64 (12.14%) Python
2 33 (6.26%) SQL
3 24 (4.55%) JavaScript
4 11 (2.09%) Java
5 6 (1.14%) C#
6 4 (0.76%) C++
7 3 (0.57%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.38%) R
8 2 (0.38%) Scala
9 1 (0.19%) Bash
9 1 (0.19%) Bicep
9 1 (0.19%) Bourne shell
9 1 (0.19%) C-shell
9 1 (0.19%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.19%) Perl
9 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 191 (36.24%) Degree
2 69 (13.09%) Master's Degree
3 65 (12.33%) Computer Science Degree
4 52 (9.87%) PhD
5 13 (2.47%) Security Cleared
6 9 (1.71%) Azure Certification
6 9 (1.71%) TOGAF Certification
7 8 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (1.52%) PMI Certification
7 8 (1.52%) PMP
7 8 (1.52%) SC Cleared
8 7 (1.33%) DBS Check
9 6 (1.14%) CCNA
9 6 (1.14%) CCNP
9 6 (1.14%) CISSP
10 5 (0.95%) APMG
10 5 (0.95%) AWS Certification
10 5 (0.95%) MBA
11 4 (0.76%) CISM
11 4 (0.76%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (5.88%) QA
2 30 (5.69%) Data Quality
3 22 (4.17%) GDPR
4 15 (2.85%) GxP
5 13 (2.47%) Accessibility
6 10 (1.90%) PMO
7 8 (1.52%) SLA
8 7 (1.33%) EMIR
9 5 (0.95%) WCAG
10 4 (0.76%) P3O
11 3 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 2 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.38%) GRC
12 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 2 (0.38%) NIST
12 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
13 1 (0.19%) NCSC
13 1 (0.19%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 7 (1.33%) Docker
2 2 (0.38%) RACF
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.19%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 25 (4.74%) Terraform
2 13 (2.47%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.76%) Ansible
4 3 (0.57%) Grafana
5 2 (0.38%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 45 (8.54%) Google
2 35 (6.64%) SAP
3 31 (5.88%) Microsoft
4 27 (5.12%) ServiceNow
5 26 (4.93%) Databricks
6 19 (3.61%) Adobe
6 19 (3.61%) Oracle
7 15 (2.85%) Dell
8 13 (2.47%) TikTok
9 9 (1.71%) OpenAI
9 9 (1.71%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.52%) Foundry
11 7 (1.33%) F5
11 7 (1.33%) OpenLink
12 6 (1.14%) IBM
12 6 (1.14%) Palantir
12 6 (1.14%) Splunk
13 4 (0.76%) Facebook
13 4 (0.76%) HubSpot
13 4 (0.76%) Snapchat