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

6 months to
12 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 270 473 268
Rank change year-on-year +203 -205 -43
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 496 297 653
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.95% 0.44% 1.24%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.09% 0.53% 1.32%
Number of salaries quoted 150 142 367
10th Percentile £39,975 £49,000 £62,500
25th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £75,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £80,000 £82,500
Median % change year-on-year - -3.03% -2.94%
75th Percentile £112,500 £100,000 £97,290
90th Percentile £122,500 £110,000 £117,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £80,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.88% +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 45,363 55,823 49,524
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 86.65% 82.88% 93.86%
Number of salaries quoted 26,894 29,023 37,931
10th Percentile £28,250 £34,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,532 £45,000 £43,750
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 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £54,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -12.04% +2.86% -

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 12 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 12 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 +229 466 £80,000 +1.27% 835
London +185 334 £100,000 +18.57% 509
UK excluding London +79 135 £62,500 -21.88% 351
Work from Home +52 77 £52,500 -36.36% 344
South East +68 65 £35,000 -54.84% 150
North of England +14 21 £65,000 +4.00% 88
North West +39 18 £56,250 -13.46% 46
Midlands +50 15 £87,500 +34.62% 35
Scotland -25 12 £68,500 -31.50% 24
West Midlands +38 11 £67,500 +3.85% 23
South West +25 10 £61,920 -22.60% 31
East of England -2 9 £45,500 -49.30% 19
Yorkshire +5 3 £75,000 +36.36% 25
East Midlands +26 2 £100,000 +50.94% 12
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 3
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 (2.82%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.01%) WordPress
3 4 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
3 4 (0.81%) CMS
3 4 (0.81%) nginx
3 4 (0.81%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.40%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.20%) CICS
5 1 (0.20%) Confluence
5 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.20%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (2.22%) Maya
2 11 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (1.01%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 4 (0.81%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.81%) Photoshop
6 3 (0.60%) Adobe Illustrator
6 3 (0.60%) Elementor
7 2 (0.40%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.40%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.20%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.20%) InVision
8 1 (0.20%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 32 (6.45%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (1.41%) Endur
3 6 (1.21%) SAP SCM
4 4 (0.81%) Payment Gateway
4 4 (0.81%) SAP EWM
5 3 (0.60%) SAP CO
5 3 (0.60%) SAP ERP
5 3 (0.60%) SAP FI
5 3 (0.60%) SAP FI/CO
5 3 (0.60%) SAP IBP
5 3 (0.60%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.60%) SAP PP
6 2 (0.40%) SAP APO
6 2 (0.40%) SAP FSCM
6 2 (0.40%) SAP MM
6 2 (0.40%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.40%) SAP QM
6 2 (0.40%) SAP WM
6 2 (0.40%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 109 (21.98%) Azure
2 94 (18.95%) AWS
3 37 (7.46%) GCP
4 34 (6.85%) SaaS
5 25 (5.04%) Amazon Bedrock
5 25 (5.04%) Vertex AI
6 22 (4.44%) Power Platform
7 14 (2.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 14 (2.82%) Cloud Computing
7 14 (2.82%) GitHub
7 14 (2.82%) Snowflake
8 13 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (2.02%) Serverless
10 9 (1.81%) OCI
11 6 (1.21%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (1.01%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (1.01%) Google Ads
12 5 (1.01%) Google Gemini
12 5 (1.01%) IaaS
12 5 (1.01%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.01%) DNS
2 4 (0.81%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 4 (0.81%) 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 31 (6.25%) Data Lake
2 30 (6.05%) NoSQL
3 29 (5.85%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (4.64%) Metadata
5 21 (4.23%) Power BI
6 17 (3.43%) Big Data
7 14 (2.82%) Hadoop
8 13 (2.62%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (1.21%) Tableau
10 5 (1.01%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.81%) DataStage
11 4 (0.81%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.81%) QlikView
12 3 (0.60%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.60%) Looker
12 3 (0.60%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.60%) SQL Server
13 2 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
14 1 (0.20%) Oracle Database 12c
14 1 (0.20%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 15 (3.02%) ERwin
2 10 (2.02%) JIRA
3 5 (1.01%) GitLab
4 4 (0.81%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.81%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.60%) eCATT
5 3 (0.60%) MLflow
6 1 (0.20%) Axure RP
6 1 (0.20%) Git
6 1 (0.20%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.20%) Vite
6 1 (0.20%) WaveMaker
General
1 172 (34.68%) Social Skills
2 166 (33.47%) Analytical Skills
3 163 (32.86%) Finance
4 146 (29.44%) Law
5 104 (20.97%) Marketing
6 49 (9.88%) Games
6 49 (9.88%) Retail
7 46 (9.27%) Presentation Skills
8 45 (9.07%) Influencing Skills
9 37 (7.46%) Banking
10 33 (6.65%) Public Sector
11 24 (4.84%) Legal
12 23 (4.64%) Pharmaceutical
13 20 (4.03%) Advertising
14 15 (3.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (2.62%) Manufacturing
16 10 (2.02%) Publishing
17 9 (1.81%) Financial Institution
18 8 (1.61%) Dutch Language
18 8 (1.61%) French Language
Job Titles
1 120 (24.19%) Senior
2 95 (19.15%) Lead
3 80 (16.13%) Architect
4 61 (12.30%) Consultant
5 42 (8.47%) Senior Consultant
6 39 (7.86%) Solutions Architect
7 26 (5.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 25 (5.04%) Gen AI Consultant
9 23 (4.64%) Account Executive
10 22 (4.44%) Lead Architect
11 19 (3.83%) Product Lead
12 18 (3.63%) Data Architect
13 16 (3.23%) IT Manager
13 16 (3.23%) Marketing Manager
14 15 (3.02%) Data Scientist
14 15 (3.02%) Senior Architect
14 15 (3.02%) Senior Manager
15 14 (2.82%) ServiceNow Architect
16 13 (2.62%) Senior Solutions Architect
17 12 (2.42%) Account Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (5.24%) LangChain
2 16 (3.23%) React
3 15 (3.02%) REST
4 13 (2.62%) Kafka
5 10 (2.02%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.61%) .NET
7 7 (1.41%) Vue
8 6 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (1.01%) ASP.NET
9 5 (1.01%) Hugging Face
9 5 (1.01%) JSON
9 5 (1.01%) XML
10 4 (0.81%) Middleware
11 3 (0.60%) .NET Framework
11 3 (0.60%) SAP Fiori
11 3 (0.60%) SAPUI5
12 2 (0.40%) CSS
12 2 (0.40%) Node.js
12 2 (0.40%) PyTorch
12 2 (0.40%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 47 (9.48%) Algorithms
2 38 (7.66%) Analytical Mindset
2 38 (7.66%) Legacy Systems
2 38 (7.66%) Product Ownership
3 31 (6.25%) Self-Motivation
4 25 (5.04%) Enterprise Software
5 24 (4.84%) Virtual Team
6 23 (4.64%) Life Science
7 22 (4.44%) FMCG
8 18 (3.63%) Management Information System
8 18 (3.63%) Onboarding
9 17 (3.43%) Social Media
10 13 (2.62%) Blog
10 13 (2.62%) Cloud Native
11 11 (2.22%) Data Structures
12 10 (2.02%) Digital Media
13 8 (1.61%) Blockchain
13 8 (1.61%) Public Cloud
13 8 (1.61%) Web Conferencing
14 7 (1.41%) 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 (40.52%) AI
2 186 (37.50%) Analytics
2 186 (37.50%) Roadmaps
3 150 (30.24%) Agile
4 128 (25.81%) Machine Learning
5 110 (22.18%) Problem-Solving
6 98 (19.76%) Business Strategy
7 94 (18.95%) Computer Science
7 94 (18.95%) Decision-Making
8 89 (17.94%) Business Development
9 80 (16.13%) Generative AI
10 79 (15.93%) Data Science
11 75 (15.12%) Stakeholder Management
12 74 (14.92%) Project Management
13 70 (14.11%) DevOps
13 70 (14.11%) IT Strategy
14 69 (13.91%) Mentoring
15 57 (11.49%) Enterprise Architecture
16 54 (10.89%) B2B
17 50 (10.08%) Coaching
Programming Languages
1 61 (12.30%) Python
2 31 (6.25%) SQL
3 18 (3.63%) JavaScript
4 10 (2.02%) Java
5 6 (1.21%) C#
6 4 (0.81%) C++
7 3 (0.60%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.40%) Bash
8 2 (0.40%) Scala
9 1 (0.20%) Bicep
9 1 (0.20%) Bourne shell
9 1 (0.20%) C-shell
9 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.20%) Perl
9 1 (0.20%) R
9 1 (0.20%) Ruby
9 1 (0.20%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 179 (36.09%) Degree
2 72 (14.52%) Master's Degree
3 58 (11.69%) Computer Science Degree
4 55 (11.09%) PhD
5 15 (3.02%) Security Cleared
6 10 (2.02%) SC Cleared
7 9 (1.81%) PMI Certification
7 9 (1.81%) PMP
7 9 (1.81%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.61%) Azure Certification
9 7 (1.41%) CISSP
9 7 (1.41%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.21%) SAP Certification
11 5 (1.01%) CISM
11 5 (1.01%) MBA
12 4 (0.81%) AWS Certification
12 4 (0.81%) CCNA
12 4 (0.81%) CCNP
12 4 (0.81%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (5.44%) Data Quality
1 27 (5.44%) QA
2 22 (4.44%) GDPR
3 20 (4.03%) GxP
4 11 (2.22%) Accessibility
5 10 (2.02%) PMO
6 8 (1.61%) SLA
7 7 (1.41%) EMIR
8 4 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.60%) NIST
10 2 (0.40%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.40%) GRC
10 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.40%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.40%) WCAG
11 1 (0.20%) Basel III
11 1 (0.20%) GMP
11 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 7 (1.41%) Docker
2 1 (0.20%) RACF
2 1 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 24 (4.84%) Terraform
2 12 (2.42%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.81%) Ansible
4 2 (0.40%) Grafana
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle ZFS
5 1 (0.20%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 49 (9.88%) Google
2 39 (7.86%) SAP
3 34 (6.85%) Microsoft
4 27 (5.44%) Databricks
5 22 (4.44%) Oracle
6 18 (3.63%) Adobe
7 16 (3.23%) ServiceNow
8 15 (3.02%) Dell
9 9 (1.81%) OpenAI
9 9 (1.81%) TikTok
10 8 (1.61%) Foundry
11 7 (1.41%) OpenLink
12 6 (1.21%) Palantir
13 5 (1.01%) F5
13 5 (1.01%) HubSpot
13 5 (1.01%) IBM
13 5 (1.01%) Salesforce
14 4 (0.81%) Facebook
14 4 (0.81%) Informatica
14 4 (0.81%) Splunk