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 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 294 278 357
Rank change year-on-year -16 +79 -95
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 549 437 745
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.66% 1.07% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.87% 1.15% 0.94%
Number of salaries quoted 202 141 487
10th Percentile £40,250 £47,500 £42,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £68,750 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +9.38% -6.43%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £117,250 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £87,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year -20.00% +9.38% +3.23%

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 63,393 38,022 79,332
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.08% 92.93% 86.08%
Number of salaries quoted 39,190 22,514 58,792
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,008
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £53,688 £50,000
% change year-on-year -6.87% +7.38% -7.94%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 -12 483 £80,000 -8.57% 403
London +52 313 £86,500 -3.89% 243
UK excluding London -98 171 £70,000 -20.00% 286
Work from Home -13 107 £68,750 -23.18% 124
North of England -77 49 £80,000 -15.47% 54
East of England -1 45 £65,050 -33.11% 9
South East -69 42 £47,500 -29.63% 157
North West -42 37 £80,000 -15.47% 26
Scotland -21 12 £80,000 -20.00% 11
Midlands -55 11 £72,500 -3.33% 30
Yorkshire -51 10 £90,000 +20.00% 21
South West -40 9 £56,000 -37.78% 22
West Midlands -24 8 £75,000 - 25
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 5
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 3
North East -31 2 - - 8

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 10 (1.82%) Palantir Foundry
2 8 (1.46%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.09%) IIS
4 5 (0.91%) CMS
4 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Exchange
5 4 (0.73%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.73%) WordPress
6 3 (0.55%) Confluence
7 1 (0.18%) Apache
7 1 (0.18%) Drupal
7 1 (0.18%) nginx
7 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 13 (2.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.91%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.91%) InVision
3 5 (0.91%) Sketch
4 4 (0.73%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 4 (0.73%) Maya
4 4 (0.73%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.36%) Adobe Illustrator
5 2 (0.36%) Elementor
5 2 (0.36%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.36%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.18%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 17 (3.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.73%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.55%) Elite 3E
5 2 (0.36%) SAP MDG-F
5 2 (0.36%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.36%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.18%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.18%) Endur
6 1 (0.18%) Magento
6 1 (0.18%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.18%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.18%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.18%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-BP
6 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.18%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.18%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 88 (16.03%) AWS
2 61 (11.11%) Azure
3 47 (8.56%) SaaS
4 43 (7.83%) GCP
5 42 (7.65%) Snowflake
6 10 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (1.64%) Cloud Computing
7 9 (1.64%) Serverless
8 8 (1.46%) GitHub
8 8 (1.46%) Power Platform
9 7 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (1.28%) SuccessFactors
10 6 (1.09%) Azure AI
10 6 (1.09%) dbt
10 6 (1.09%) OCI
11 5 (0.91%) Azure Machine Learning
11 5 (0.91%) Figma
11 5 (0.91%) Matillion
11 5 (0.91%) Microsoft 365
12 4 (0.73%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.37%) Firewall
2 7 (1.28%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.28%) Network Security
3 4 (0.73%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.73%) WAN
3 4 (0.73%) Wireless
4 3 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.55%) WebEx
4 3 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.36%) Broadband
5 2 (0.36%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.36%) LAN
5 2 (0.36%) SSL
5 2 (0.36%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.18%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.18%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.18%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.18%) WLAN
6 1 (0.18%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (6.19%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (5.28%) Data Lake
3 13 (2.37%) NoSQL
4 8 (1.46%) Tableau
5 7 (1.28%) Big Data
6 6 (1.09%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.09%) Metadata
6 6 (1.09%) Power BI
7 5 (0.91%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.73%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.55%) BigQuery
9 3 (0.55%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.36%) Looker
10 2 (0.36%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.36%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.36%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.18%) MongoDB
11 1 (0.18%) SAP BW
11 1 (0.18%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 7 (1.28%) GitLab
2 6 (1.09%) Cucumber
2 6 (1.09%) MLflow
3 5 (0.91%) Axure RP
4 4 (0.73%) Git
4 4 (0.73%) JIRA
5 3 (0.55%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.18%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.18%) ER Studio
6 1 (0.18%) ERwin
6 1 (0.18%) Gatling
6 1 (0.18%) JMeter
6 1 (0.18%) PowerDesigner
6 1 (0.18%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.18%) Selenium
6 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.18%) Vagrant
General
1 184 (33.52%) Finance
2 131 (23.86%) Social Skills
3 92 (16.76%) Marketing
4 91 (16.58%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (12.39%) Presentation Skills
6 67 (12.20%) Public Sector
7 52 (9.47%) Retail
8 36 (6.56%) Legal
9 30 (5.46%) Influencing Skills
10 28 (5.10%) Banking
10 28 (5.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 26 (4.74%) Law
11 26 (4.74%) Pharmaceutical
12 19 (3.46%) Financial Institution
13 17 (3.10%) Aerospace
13 17 (3.10%) Games
14 15 (2.73%) Brand Awareness
15 11 (2.00%) Manufacturing
16 10 (1.82%) Organisational Skills
17 9 (1.64%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 131 (23.86%) Senior
2 82 (14.94%) Architect
3 79 (14.39%) Consultant
4 66 (12.02%) Lead
5 61 (11.11%) Account Executive
6 60 (10.93%) Sales Executive
7 42 (7.65%) Senior Sales Executive
8 38 (6.92%) Business Development Executive
9 34 (6.19%) Senior Account Executive
10 33 (6.01%) Business Sales Executive
10 33 (6.01%) Sales Account Executive
11 28 (5.10%) Business Architect
11 28 (5.10%) Senior Manager
12 25 (4.55%) Product Specialist
12 25 (4.55%) Senior Architect
13 24 (4.37%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (4.37%) Senior Consultant
14 22 (4.01%) Business Consultant
15 19 (3.46%) Business Manager
15 19 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.37%) Kafka
2 12 (2.19%) Spring
2 12 (2.19%) Spring Boot
3 7 (1.28%) CSS
3 7 (1.28%) HTML
4 6 (1.09%) REST
4 6 (1.09%) SOAP
5 5 (0.91%) OAuth
5 5 (0.91%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.91%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.91%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.91%) React
5 5 (0.91%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.73%) Flutter
6 4 (0.73%) LangChain
6 4 (0.73%) XML
7 3 (0.55%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.55%) PySpark
7 3 (0.55%) VML
8 2 (0.36%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.01%) Life Science
2 31 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 29 (5.28%) Blog
3 29 (5.28%) Enterprise Software
4 22 (4.01%) Self-Motivation
5 15 (2.73%) AI Agents
6 14 (2.55%) Management Information System
6 14 (2.55%) Product Ownership
7 13 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (2.37%) e-Learning
7 13 (2.37%) Onboarding
7 13 (2.37%) Social Media
7 13 (2.37%) Web Conferencing
8 11 (2.00%) Podcast
9 10 (1.82%) Algorithms
10 9 (1.64%) Data Fabric
11 8 (1.46%) Legacy Applications
11 8 (1.46%) Security Posture
11 8 (1.46%) Virtual Team
12 7 (1.28%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.55%) Windows
2 2 (0.36%) Linux
3 1 (0.18%) Android
3 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.18%) VMS
3 1 (0.18%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 186 (33.88%) AI
2 165 (30.05%) Decision-Making
3 160 (29.14%) Business Development
4 126 (22.95%) Analytics
5 111 (20.22%) Roadmaps
6 109 (19.85%) Mentoring
7 103 (18.76%) Agile
8 75 (13.66%) Business Strategy
8 75 (13.66%) Workshop Facilitation
9 74 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
10 65 (11.84%) Stakeholder Management
11 64 (11.66%) Cybersecurity
12 63 (11.48%) Strategic Thinking
13 62 (11.29%) Use Case
14 60 (10.93%) B2B
15 56 (10.20%) Data Science
15 56 (10.20%) Generative AI
16 55 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 53 (9.65%) Machine Learning
18 52 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 38 (6.92%) Python
2 36 (6.56%) Java
3 22 (4.01%) SQL
4 7 (1.28%) R
5 6 (1.09%) JavaScript
6 5 (0.91%) C#
6 5 (0.91%) Kotlin
6 5 (0.91%) Scala
7 4 (0.73%) Go
8 3 (0.55%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.18%) ABAP
9 1 (0.18%) Bash
9 1 (0.18%) PHP
9 1 (0.18%) Ruby
9 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 158 (28.78%) Degree
2 65 (11.84%) Security Cleared
3 42 (7.65%) SC Cleared
4 40 (7.29%) Master's Degree
5 23 (4.19%) PhD
6 20 (3.64%) CISSP
7 18 (3.28%) CISM
8 15 (2.73%) Azure Certification
9 13 (2.37%) AWS Certification
10 11 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
10 11 (2.00%) DBS Check
11 10 (1.82%) DV Cleared
12 9 (1.64%) CRISC
12 9 (1.64%) MBA
13 8 (1.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 7 (1.28%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 7 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
14 7 (1.28%) GSEC
14 7 (1.28%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
15 6 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.55%) Accessibility
2 24 (4.37%) GRC
3 19 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (3.46%) NIST
4 17 (3.10%) GxP
5 12 (2.19%) Data Quality
6 11 (2.00%) QA
7 9 (1.64%) EU AI Act
7 9 (1.64%) JSP 440
8 7 (1.28%) GDPR
8 7 (1.28%) Government Security Classifications
8 7 (1.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.09%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.91%) SLA
10 5 (0.91%) WCAG
11 3 (0.55%) IFRS
11 3 (0.55%) NCSC
11 3 (0.55%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 9 (1.64%) Docker
2 4 (0.73%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 15 (2.73%) Terraform
2 13 (2.37%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.64%) Ansible
4 5 (0.91%) Puppet
5 3 (0.55%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.36%) Argo
6 2 (0.36%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.36%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.36%) Salt
7 1 (0.18%) Consul
7 1 (0.18%) Grafana
7 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.18%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (17.49%) Dell
2 38 (6.92%) Databricks
2 38 (6.92%) SAP
3 34 (6.19%) Microsoft
4 26 (4.74%) Informatica
5 25 (4.55%) Google
6 24 (4.37%) Denodo
6 24 (4.37%) Teradata
7 20 (3.64%) Oracle
8 19 (3.46%) ServiceNow
9 17 (3.10%) Salesforce
10 13 (2.37%) HubSpot
11 12 (2.19%) Cognizant
12 11 (2.00%) Foundry
13 10 (1.82%) Palantir
14 9 (1.64%) Adobe
15 7 (1.28%) Workday
16 6 (1.09%) IBM
16 6 (1.09%) OpenAI
17 5 (0.91%) BT