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 11 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 400 290
Rank change year-on-year +114 -110 -53
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 472 320 733
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.64% 0.99%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.90% 0.70% 1.12%
Number of salaries quoted 166 116 478
10th Percentile £45,125 £58,125 £46,250
25th Percentile £61,938 £72,500 £67,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £89,750 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.86% +12.19% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £121,250 £130,000 £120,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £86,500 £79,632
% change year-on-year -19.08% +8.62% +2.75%

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 52,730 45,725 65,371
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.77% 92.08% 88.28%
Number of salaries quoted 31,308 22,323 50,742
10th Percentile £29,000 £35,000 £29,500
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,250 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £97,125 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 11 February 2026.

Salary histogram for Thought Leadership in the UK

Thought Leadership
Top 17 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 11 February 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 +107 409 £80,000 -6.71% 273
London +107 267 £85,000 -5.56% 171
UK excluding London +27 150 £70,000 -19.08% 220
Work from Home +47 75 £80,000 - 91
South East +25 47 £45,000 -37.93% 135
North of England -7 40 £77,500 -4.02% 44
North West +23 32 £72,500 -16.18% 26
East of England +17 21 £70,000 -22.01% 8
Scotland -23 20 £77,250 -22.75% 5
South West -7 10 £60,000 -25.00% 15
Midlands +15 9 £100,000 +33.33% 15
West Midlands +13 6 £75,000 - 12
Yorkshire -26 6 £90,000 +44.00% 10
North East - 2 - - 8
Northern Ireland - 2 - -
East Midlands - 1 £100,000 - 3
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 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 9 (1.91%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.48%) CMS
3 6 (1.27%) WordPress
4 5 (1.06%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.06%) IIS
5 3 (0.64%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.42%) Confluence
7 1 (0.21%) CICS
7 1 (0.21%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.21%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (2.75%) Maya
2 10 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
4 7 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
5 6 (1.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.85%) Adobe XD
6 4 (0.85%) InVision
6 4 (0.85%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.85%) Sketch
7 3 (0.64%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.64%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.64%) Elementor
8 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.21%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 17 (3.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.69%) Endur
4 5 (1.06%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.64%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.64%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.42%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.42%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.42%) Shopify
6 2 (0.42%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.21%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.21%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 85 (18.01%) AWS
2 64 (13.56%) Azure
3 42 (8.90%) SaaS
4 33 (6.99%) GCP
5 24 (5.08%) Snowflake
6 14 (2.97%) GitHub
7 12 (2.54%) Cloud Computing
7 12 (2.54%) Power Platform
8 11 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (2.12%) Dynamics 365
9 10 (2.12%) OCI
10 9 (1.91%) Amazon Bedrock
10 9 (1.91%) dbt
10 9 (1.91%) Vertex AI
11 7 (1.48%) Matillion
11 7 (1.48%) Serverless
12 5 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (1.06%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (1.06%) Google Ads
12 5 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.85%) Firewall
1 4 (0.85%) WAN
2 3 (0.64%) SD-WAN
2 3 (0.64%) Wireless
3 2 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
3 2 (0.42%) LAN
3 2 (0.42%) Tactical Data Link
3 2 (0.42%) WebEx
3 2 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.21%) BGP
4 1 (0.21%) Broadband
4 1 (0.21%) Intrusion Detection
4 1 (0.21%) MPLS
4 1 (0.21%) Network Security
4 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (5.51%) NoSQL
2 21 (4.45%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (2.75%) Big Data
4 11 (2.33%) Tableau
5 10 (2.12%) Hadoop
5 10 (2.12%) Metadata
5 10 (2.12%) Power BI
6 6 (1.27%) BigQuery
7 5 (1.06%) Amazon Redshift
7 5 (1.06%) Data Lake
7 5 (1.06%) Data Mining
7 5 (1.06%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.85%) DataStage
8 4 (0.85%) QlikView
8 4 (0.85%) SAP HANA
8 4 (0.85%) SQL Server
9 3 (0.64%) DynamoDB
9 3 (0.64%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.42%) Looker
Development Applications
1 13 (2.75%) ERwin
2 6 (1.27%) GitLab
3 5 (1.06%) JIRA
4 4 (0.85%) Axure RP
4 4 (0.85%) Cucumber
4 4 (0.85%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.85%) MLflow
4 4 (0.85%) PowerDesigner
5 2 (0.42%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.21%) Git
6 1 (0.21%) Selenium
6 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.21%) Vite
General
1 193 (40.89%) Finance
2 140 (29.66%) Social Skills
3 109 (23.09%) Analytical Skills
4 92 (19.49%) Marketing
5 73 (15.47%) Law
6 45 (9.53%) Games
7 38 (8.05%) Public Sector
7 38 (8.05%) Retail
8 36 (7.63%) Pharmaceutical
9 34 (7.20%) Legal
10 33 (6.99%) Banking
11 32 (6.78%) Presentation Skills
12 24 (5.08%) Influencing Skills
13 15 (3.18%) Financial Institution
14 14 (2.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 12 (2.54%) Aerospace
15 12 (2.54%) Publishing
16 8 (1.69%) Dutch Language
16 8 (1.69%) French Language
16 8 (1.69%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 92 (19.49%) Senior
2 90 (19.07%) Lead
3 85 (18.01%) Architect
4 66 (13.98%) Consultant
5 28 (5.93%) Senior Consultant
6 26 (5.51%) Sales Executive
6 26 (5.51%) Senior Sales Executive
7 24 (5.08%) Account Executive
7 24 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
8 20 (4.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 20 (4.24%) Business Architect
8 20 (4.24%) Lead Architect
9 19 (4.03%) Data Architect
10 18 (3.81%) Business Development Executive
10 18 (3.81%) Business Sales Executive
10 18 (3.81%) Sales Account Executive
10 18 (3.81%) Senior Account Executive
11 17 (3.60%) Senior Manager
12 16 (3.39%) IT Manager
12 16 (3.39%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.97%) React
2 12 (2.54%) LangChain
2 12 (2.54%) REST
3 9 (1.91%) LlamaIndex
3 9 (1.91%) Spring
4 8 (1.69%) AngularJS
4 8 (1.69%) Kafka
4 8 (1.69%) Spring Boot
5 6 (1.27%) CSS
5 6 (1.27%) HTML
6 5 (1.06%) .NET
6 5 (1.06%) Play Framework
6 5 (1.06%) Vue
7 4 (0.85%) OAuth
8 3 (0.64%) .NET Framework
8 3 (0.64%) Middleware
8 3 (0.64%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.64%) Oracle Fusion
8 3 (0.64%) PyTorch
8 3 (0.64%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 39 (8.26%) Life Science
2 37 (7.84%) Self-Motivation
3 31 (6.57%) Algorithms
4 27 (5.72%) Enterprise Software
5 22 (4.66%) Blog
5 22 (4.66%) Legacy Systems
6 21 (4.45%) Cloud Native
7 20 (4.24%) Product Ownership
8 18 (3.81%) Social Media
9 16 (3.39%) Management Information System
10 14 (2.97%) Onboarding
11 11 (2.33%) Data Structures
11 11 (2.33%) Web Conferencing
12 9 (1.91%) Credit Risk
12 9 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
13 8 (1.69%) Blockchain
13 8 (1.69%) Podcast
14 7 (1.48%) Virtual Team
15 6 (1.27%) NHS
16 5 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.21%) Android
1 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (38.77%) AI
2 144 (30.51%) Analytics
3 137 (29.03%) Roadmaps
4 129 (27.33%) Business Development
5 127 (26.91%) Agile
6 102 (21.61%) Decision-Making
7 95 (20.13%) Business Strategy
8 85 (18.01%) Mentoring
9 83 (17.58%) Stakeholder Management
10 81 (17.16%) Computer Science
11 80 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
12 76 (16.10%) Machine Learning
13 70 (14.83%) Generative AI
14 60 (12.71%) Data Science
15 58 (12.29%) IT Strategy
16 57 (12.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 56 (11.86%) Enterprise Architecture
18 54 (11.44%) B2B
19 51 (10.81%) DevOps
19 51 (10.81%) Workshop Facilitation
Programming Languages
1 43 (9.11%) Python
2 28 (5.93%) SQL
3 22 (4.66%) Java
4 15 (3.18%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.27%) C#
5 6 (1.27%) R
5 6 (1.27%) Scala
6 4 (0.85%) Kotlin
7 3 (0.64%) PowerShell
8 2 (0.42%) Go
8 2 (0.42%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.21%) ABAP
9 1 (0.21%) Bash
9 1 (0.21%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 158 (33.47%) Degree
2 77 (16.31%) Master's Degree
3 53 (11.23%) PhD
4 40 (8.47%) Security Cleared
5 32 (6.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 26 (5.51%) SC Cleared
7 12 (2.54%) CISSP
8 11 (2.33%) CISM
9 10 (2.12%) PMI Certification
9 10 (2.12%) PMP
10 9 (1.91%) AWS Certification
10 9 (1.91%) Azure Certification
10 9 (1.91%) DBS Check
10 9 (1.91%) TOGAF Certification
11 8 (1.69%) MBA
12 5 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.06%) CISA
13 4 (0.85%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 4 (0.85%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 4 (0.85%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (6.14%) GxP
2 17 (3.60%) Accessibility
3 14 (2.97%) QA
4 12 (2.54%) Data Quality
4 12 (2.54%) GDPR
5 10 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (2.12%) PMO
6 8 (1.69%) EMIR
6 8 (1.69%) GRC
6 8 (1.69%) NIST
7 6 (1.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 5 (1.06%) SLA
8 5 (1.06%) WCAG
9 3 (0.64%) NCSC
10 2 (0.42%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.42%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.21%) Basel III
11 1 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.21%) JSP 440
System Software
1 5 (1.06%) Docker
2 1 (0.21%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 18 (3.81%) Terraform
2 6 (1.27%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.64%) Ansible
3 3 (0.64%) Grafana
4 2 (0.42%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.42%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 31 (6.57%) Microsoft
2 28 (5.93%) Google
2 28 (5.93%) SAP
3 26 (5.51%) Oracle
4 21 (4.45%) Databricks
5 19 (4.03%) Dell
6 12 (2.54%) Adobe
7 11 (2.33%) HubSpot
8 10 (2.12%) IBM
8 10 (2.12%) Salesforce
9 9 (1.91%) ServiceNow
10 8 (1.69%) OpenLink
11 6 (1.27%) Cognizant
12 5 (1.06%) BT
13 4 (0.85%) Informatica
13 4 (0.85%) MuleSoft
13 4 (0.85%) OpenAI
13 4 (0.85%) Workday
14 3 (0.64%) Facebook
14 3 (0.64%) Instagram