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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 314 260 448
Rank change year-on-year -54 +188 -193
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 640 589 417
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.61% 1.19% 0.50%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.83% 1.33% 0.62%
Number of salaries quoted 255 153 250
10th Percentile £47,200 £45,000 £42,500
25th Percentile £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +3.13% -
75th Percentile £108,050 £105,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £119,850 £119,750 £137,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,500 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +11.85% -15.63% +8.84%

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 77,565 44,386 67,277
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.71% 89.40% 81.08%
Number of salaries quoted 53,403 25,236 43,866
10th Percentile £30,580 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,170 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +13.40% -3.00% -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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -64 574 £85,000 +6.25% 686
London -25 372 £95,000 +5.56% 534
UK excluding London -89 207 £75,500 +11.85% 183
Work from Home -8 149 £70,000 -17.65% 239
North of England -21 65 £95,000 +0.38% 49
North West +8 39 £95,000 +0.38% 35
Midlands -11 38 £80,000 +56.10% 24
East of England - 38 £60,100 - 12
South East -121 28 £58,750 +19.90% 48
West Midlands -22 21 £80,000 +56.10% 17
Wales - 19 £55,000 - 6
East Midlands -6 17 £50,000 - 7
Yorkshire -32 15 £72,170 -3.77% 11
South West -63 14 £59,750 -25.31% 20
North East -43 11 £100,000 +71.67% 3
Scotland 0 4 £110,000 +15.79% 15
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 11

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 16 (2.50%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.78%) Confluence
5 3 (0.47%) CMS
5 3 (0.47%) SAS
6 2 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.31%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.31%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.31%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.16%) Apache
7 1 (0.16%) Drupal
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
7 1 (0.16%) nginx
7 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.16%) InVision
5 1 (0.16%) Sketch
5 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (3.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.94%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.63%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.63%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.47%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.47%) Summit
5 2 (0.31%) Elite 3E
5 2 (0.31%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.31%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.31%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.16%) Magento
6 1 (0.16%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.16%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 181 (28.28%) AWS
2 100 (15.63%) Azure
3 61 (9.53%) SaaS
4 55 (8.59%) GCP
5 37 (5.78%) Cloud Computing
6 30 (4.69%) Snowflake
7 29 (4.53%) AWS CloudFormation
8 25 (3.91%) Serverless
9 17 (2.66%) Power Platform
10 15 (2.34%) Amazon Bedrock
11 14 (2.19%) GitHub
12 12 (1.88%) Azure AI
13 10 (1.56%) PaaS
14 9 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (1.25%) Amazon ECS
15 8 (1.25%) Amazon S3
15 8 (1.25%) AWS Lambda
15 8 (1.25%) Azure DevOps
15 8 (1.25%) Microsoft 365
16 7 (1.09%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 18 (2.81%) Firewall
2 10 (1.56%) Internet
3 6 (0.94%) Intrusion Detection
3 6 (0.94%) Network Security
3 6 (0.94%) Wireless
4 5 (0.78%) Broadband
4 5 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
4 5 (0.78%) Cisco Wireless
4 5 (0.78%) LAN
4 5 (0.78%) SD-WAN
4 5 (0.78%) WAN
4 5 (0.78%) WebEx
4 5 (0.78%) WLAN
5 2 (0.31%) AMQP
5 2 (0.31%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.31%) MQTT
5 2 (0.31%) SSL
6 1 (0.16%) GoToMeeting
6 1 (0.16%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.16%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.53%) Data Lake
3 23 (3.59%) NoSQL
4 20 (3.13%) Data Mining
5 19 (2.97%) Tableau
6 17 (2.66%) Amazon QuickSight
7 16 (2.50%) Power BI
8 7 (1.09%) Big Data
8 7 (1.09%) Metadata
9 6 (0.94%) SAP HANA
10 4 (0.63%) BusinessObjects
10 4 (0.63%) Delta Lake
10 4 (0.63%) Geospatial Data
10 4 (0.63%) Hadoop
11 3 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.47%) Semantic Layer
11 3 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.31%) SAP BW
12 2 (0.31%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (3.13%) GitLab
2 19 (2.97%) Cucumber
3 8 (1.25%) MLflow
4 6 (0.94%) Git
4 6 (0.94%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.94%) Maven
5 5 (0.78%) JIRA
6 4 (0.63%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.31%) Ant
7 2 (0.31%) Apache Ivy
7 2 (0.31%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.31%) IBM UrbanCode
7 2 (0.31%) rollup.js
8 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.16%) Axure RP
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) JMeter
8 1 (0.16%) mountebank
8 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.16%) Vite
General
1 243 (37.97%) Finance
2 178 (27.81%) Social Skills
3 130 (20.31%) Marketing
4 122 (19.06%) Public Sector
5 87 (13.59%) Analytical Skills
6 63 (9.84%) Retail
7 61 (9.53%) Presentation Skills
8 56 (8.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 49 (7.66%) Banking
10 40 (6.25%) Influencing Skills
10 40 (6.25%) Legal
11 21 (3.28%) Brand Awareness
11 21 (3.28%) Law
12 19 (2.97%) Back Office
12 19 (2.97%) Telecoms
13 18 (2.81%) Financial Institution
14 17 (2.66%) Public Speaking
15 15 (2.34%) Aerospace
15 15 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (2.19%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 140 (21.88%) Senior
2 109 (17.03%) Architect
3 74 (11.56%) Consultant
3 74 (11.56%) Lead
4 48 (7.50%) Senior Manager
5 39 (6.09%) Sales Executive
6 37 (5.78%) Account Executive
7 33 (5.16%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.53%) Product Manager
9 28 (4.38%) Senior Architect
10 24 (3.75%) Data Management Specialist
10 24 (3.75%) Product Specialist
10 24 (3.75%) Senior Consultant
11 23 (3.59%) Lead Architect
11 23 (3.59%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.44%) Business Development Executive
13 21 (3.28%) Account Manager
14 20 (3.13%) Java Engineer
14 20 (3.13%) Security Architect
14 20 (3.13%) Senior Digital Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.69%) Kafka
2 22 (3.44%) Spring
2 22 (3.44%) Spring Boot
3 11 (1.72%) LangGraph
4 10 (1.56%) LangChain
5 7 (1.09%) FastAPI
6 6 (0.94%) XML
7 5 (0.78%) CrewAI
7 5 (0.78%) Model Context Protocol
7 5 (0.78%) PyTorch
7 5 (0.78%) TensorFlow
8 4 (0.63%) CSS
8 4 (0.63%) PySpark
8 4 (0.63%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (0.63%) React
8 4 (0.63%) REST
8 4 (0.63%) SOAP
8 4 (0.63%) VML
9 3 (0.47%) HTML
9 3 (0.47%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 69 (10.78%) Cloud Native
2 64 (10.00%) Onboarding
3 45 (7.03%) Enterprise Software
4 40 (6.25%) Blog
5 27 (4.22%) AI Agents
6 25 (3.91%) Product Ownership
7 24 (3.75%) e-Learning
8 23 (3.59%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (3.13%) Public Cloud
10 19 (2.97%) Social Media
11 17 (2.66%) Web Conferencing
12 15 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (2.19%) Management Information System
13 14 (2.19%) NHS
14 12 (1.88%) Legacy Applications
15 11 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
16 10 (1.56%) Data Fabric
16 10 (1.56%) Enterprise Cloud
16 10 (1.56%) Life Science
17 9 (1.41%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.25%) Linux
2 7 (1.09%) Windows
3 3 (0.47%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.31%) Solaris
4 2 (0.31%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (35.16%) AI
2 186 (29.06%) Mentoring
3 169 (26.41%) Business Development
4 166 (25.94%) Roadmaps
5 165 (25.78%) Decision-Making
6 158 (24.69%) Analytics
7 109 (17.03%) Agile
8 95 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
9 84 (13.13%) Continuous Improvement
10 83 (12.97%) Problem-Solving
11 81 (12.66%) Machine Learning
12 78 (12.19%) DevOps
13 73 (11.41%) CI/CD
14 72 (11.25%) B2B
15 68 (10.63%) Coaching
15 68 (10.63%) Cybersecurity
15 68 (10.63%) Strategic Thinking
16 64 (10.00%) Risk Management
17 62 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
18 59 (9.22%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 72 (11.25%) Python
2 54 (8.44%) SQL
3 42 (6.56%) Java
4 10 (1.56%) R
5 6 (0.94%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.78%) Bash
7 4 (0.63%) Go
8 3 (0.47%) C#
8 3 (0.47%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.31%) ABAP
9 2 (0.31%) Bicep
9 2 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.31%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.31%) Scala
10 1 (0.16%) PHP
10 1 (0.16%) Ruby
10 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 155 (24.22%) Degree
2 99 (15.47%) Security Cleared
3 65 (10.16%) SC Cleared
4 39 (6.09%) AWS Certification
5 23 (3.59%) Master's Degree
6 22 (3.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 22 (3.44%) CISSP
7 20 (3.13%) CISM
8 18 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
9 17 (2.66%) Azure Certification
10 16 (2.50%) DV Cleared
11 15 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
12 13 (2.03%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 12 (1.88%) CRISC
14 11 (1.72%) DBS Check
15 10 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
15 10 (1.56%) MBA
16 8 (1.25%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 8 (1.25%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 6 (0.94%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (4.69%) GRC
2 29 (4.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (3.75%) NIST
4 23 (3.59%) GDPR
5 17 (2.66%) Accessibility
5 17 (2.66%) Data Quality
6 13 (2.03%) JSP 440
7 12 (1.88%) SLA
8 11 (1.72%) PCI DSS
8 11 (1.72%) QA
9 9 (1.41%) EU AI Act
9 9 (1.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 7 (1.09%) Basel III
11 6 (0.94%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.78%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.63%) IFRS
13 4 (0.63%) PMO
14 3 (0.47%) NCSC
14 3 (0.47%) WCAG
15 2 (0.31%) Solvency II
System Software
1 23 (3.59%) Docker
2 6 (0.94%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.47%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 28 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 21 (3.28%) Terraform
3 13 (2.03%) Ansible
4 7 (1.09%) Puppet
5 5 (0.78%) Progress Chef
6 4 (0.63%) Argo
7 2 (0.31%) Salt
8 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.16%) Consul
8 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.16%) Grafana
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
8 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 77 (12.03%) Dell
2 60 (9.38%) Microsoft
3 38 (5.94%) Databricks
4 37 (5.78%) SAP
5 27 (4.22%) Informatica
6 25 (3.91%) Salesforce
6 25 (3.91%) Teradata
7 24 (3.75%) Denodo
7 24 (3.75%) Google
8 21 (3.28%) ServiceNow
9 18 (2.81%) Foundry
10 16 (2.50%) Palantir
11 11 (1.72%) HubSpot
12 8 (1.25%) Cisco
13 7 (1.09%) OpenAI
13 7 (1.09%) Oracle
13 7 (1.09%) Workday
14 6 (0.94%) Cognizant
15 5 (0.78%) Aruba
15 5 (0.78%) Fortinet