Strategic Thinking Job Trends

Strategic Thinking
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Strategic Thinking skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 145 268
Rank change year-on-year -88 +123 +55
Permanent jobs citing Strategic Thinking 739 1,028 1,091
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.80% 2.31% 1.02%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.09% 2.50% 1.24%
Number of salaries quoted 396 381 696
10th Percentile £41,500 £40,500 £38,603
25th Percentile £61,250 £55,184 £48,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £77,500 £70,000 £67,500
Median % change year-on-year +10.71% +3.70% -3.57%
75th Percentile £97,500 £90,000 £84,964
90th Percentile £115,000 £117,500 £108,375
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,966 £62,500 £63,823
% change year-on-year +13.55% -2.07% -8.82%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Strategic Thinking 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 67,552 41,143 88,287
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.85% 92.63% 82.27%
Number of salaries quoted 46,362 21,911 62,510
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,000 £29,556
25th Percentile £41,250 £39,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.69%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -9.09%

Strategic Thinking
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Strategic Thinking relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Strategic Thinking job vacancy trend in the UK

Strategic Thinking
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Strategic Thinking.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Strategic Thinking

Strategic Thinking
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Strategic Thinking over the 6 months to 13 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Strategic Thinking in the UK

Strategic Thinking
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Strategic Thinking within the UK over the 6 months to 13 June 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 -97 636 £80,000 +14.29% 400
UK excluding London -112 391 £70,966 +13.55% 247
Work from Home -63 267 £77,500 +15.67% 229
London -56 264 £95,000 +18.16% 204
South East -91 109 £85,000 +38.78% 80
North of England -77 99 £69,928 +14.17% 57
Midlands -18 75 £70,000 +16.67% 37
North West -45 53 £70,000 +4.48% 27
South West -49 44 £67,000 +7.20% 37
East Midlands -12 41 £75,000 +25.00% 15
West Midlands -32 34 £70,000 -3.45% 22
East of England -39 33 £72,500 +19.34% 21
Yorkshire -39 32 £67,716 +29.54% 18
Scotland +16 22 £70,000 -16.41% 13
North East -31 14 £67,500 - 12
Wales -36 13 £72,500 - 2
Northern Ireland -30 2 £39,500 -56.11% 4

Strategic Thinking
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 (1.89%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (1.22%) CMS
3 9 (1.22%) SharePoint
4 4 (0.54%) Confluence
4 4 (0.54%) IIS
5 3 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.27%) Apache Spark
7 1 (0.14%) Apache
7 1 (0.14%) WordPress
Applications
1 12 (1.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 9 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.27%) PlantUML
5 1 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.14%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.14%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (1.35%) Salesforce CRM
2 8 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.14%) Academy Revenues and Benefits
5 1 (0.14%) Exchequer
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
5 1 (0.14%) SAP FI
5 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.14%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG-F
5 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG-M
5 1 (0.14%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 84 (11.37%) Azure
2 76 (10.28%) AWS
3 66 (8.93%) SaaS
4 44 (5.95%) GCP
5 33 (4.47%) Microsoft 365
6 26 (3.52%) Power Platform
7 22 (2.98%) Entra ID
8 13 (1.76%) Serverless
9 9 (1.22%) Snowflake
10 8 (1.08%) Figma
11 7 (0.95%) Azure Data Factory
11 7 (0.95%) PaaS
12 5 (0.68%) GitHub
13 4 (0.54%) Amazon ECS
13 4 (0.54%) Amazon S3
13 4 (0.54%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (0.54%) Datadog
13 4 (0.54%) IaaS
13 4 (0.54%) OneDrive
13 4 (0.54%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.84%) Broadband
2 16 (2.17%) WAN
3 14 (1.89%) LAN
4 13 (1.76%) Firewall
5 12 (1.62%) Internet
6 10 (1.35%) Network Security
7 9 (1.22%) VPN
8 7 (0.95%) LTE
9 5 (0.68%) SD-WAN
9 5 (0.68%) WLAN
10 4 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (0.41%) ATM
11 3 (0.41%) SSL
11 3 (0.41%) TCP/IP
11 3 (0.41%) VoIP
11 3 (0.41%) Wireless
12 2 (0.27%) DNS
12 2 (0.27%) IPv6
12 2 (0.27%) Kerberos
12 2 (0.27%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.84%) Power BI
2 10 (1.35%) MongoDB
3 9 (1.22%) NoSQL
3 9 (1.22%) SQL Server
3 9 (1.22%) Tableau
4 7 (0.95%) Metadata
4 7 (0.95%) Relational Database
5 6 (0.81%) Big Data
5 6 (0.81%) MySQL
5 6 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (0.68%) BigQuery
6 5 (0.68%) Data Mining
6 5 (0.68%) Hadoop
7 4 (0.54%) Data Lake
7 4 (0.54%) Data Vault
7 4 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.54%) Redis
8 3 (0.41%) DynamoDB
8 3 (0.41%) MariaDB
8 3 (0.41%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 6 (0.81%) JIRA
1 6 (0.81%) JMeter
1 6 (0.81%) Selenium
2 4 (0.54%) Appium
2 4 (0.54%) Cypress.io
2 4 (0.54%) Postman
2 4 (0.54%) REST Assured
3 3 (0.41%) Git
4 2 (0.27%) Cucumber
4 2 (0.27%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.27%) JUnit
4 2 (0.27%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.14%) GitLab
5 1 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 302 (40.87%) Social Skills
2 286 (38.70%) Finance
3 197 (26.66%) Analytical Skills
4 112 (15.16%) Marketing
5 83 (11.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 81 (10.96%) Law
7 71 (9.61%) Public Sector
8 64 (8.66%) Retail
9 60 (8.12%) Influencing Skills
10 58 (7.85%) Legal
11 50 (6.77%) Banking
11 50 (6.77%) Manufacturing
12 39 (5.28%) Presentation Skills
13 33 (4.47%) Telecoms
14 27 (3.65%) Automotive
14 27 (3.65%) Games
15 26 (3.52%) Local Government
16 21 (2.84%) Financial Institution
17 14 (1.89%) Advertising
17 14 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 133 (18.00%) Senior
2 109 (14.75%) Architect
3 96 (12.99%) Lead
4 42 (5.68%) Analyst
5 38 (5.14%) Senior Manager
6 34 (4.60%) Business Manager
7 30 (4.06%) Consultant
7 30 (4.06%) IT Manager
8 29 (3.92%) Development Manager
9 28 (3.79%) Commercial Manager
9 28 (3.79%) Senior Architect
10 27 (3.65%) Product Manager
10 27 (3.65%) Solutions Architect
11 26 (3.52%) Business Development Manager
12 25 (3.38%) Data Analyst
13 24 (3.25%) Senior Analyst
14 23 (3.11%) Lead Architect
15 21 (2.84%) Technical Architect
16 20 (2.71%) Account Manager
16 20 (2.71%) Head of IT
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (0.95%) HEVC
2 5 (0.68%) Oracle Fusion
2 5 (0.68%) Playwright
2 5 (0.68%) React
2 5 (0.68%) RESTful
3 4 (0.54%) .NET
3 4 (0.54%) AngularJS
3 4 (0.54%) CSS
3 4 (0.54%) HTML
3 4 (0.54%) JBoss Seam
3 4 (0.54%) jQuery
3 4 (0.54%) LangChain
3 4 (0.54%) Node.js
3 4 (0.54%) Play Framework
3 4 (0.54%) Vue
4 3 (0.41%) CSS3
4 3 (0.41%) HTML5
4 3 (0.41%) Spring
5 2 (0.27%) NumPy
5 2 (0.27%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 34 (4.60%) Management Information System
1 34 (4.60%) Self-Motivation
2 33 (4.47%) Product Ownership
3 28 (3.79%) Cloud Native
3 28 (3.79%) Onboarding
4 21 (2.84%) Security Posture
5 18 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
6 15 (2.03%) Algorithms
6 15 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 14 (1.89%) Life Science
8 11 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
8 11 (1.49%) Public Cloud
8 11 (1.49%) Social Media
9 10 (1.35%) Data Structures
10 9 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
10 9 (1.22%) NHS
11 8 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.08%) Mobile App
11 8 (1.08%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 19 (2.57%) Windows
2 15 (2.03%) Linux
3 9 (1.22%) Windows Server
4 5 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.14%) CentOS
5 1 (0.14%) Mac OS
5 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 233 (31.53%) Roadmaps
2 174 (23.55%) Problem-Solving
3 165 (22.33%) Decision-Making
4 164 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
5 163 (22.06%) Agile
6 136 (18.40%) AI
6 136 (18.40%) Stakeholder Management
7 123 (16.64%) Analytics
8 116 (15.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 111 (15.02%) Mentoring
10 107 (14.48%) Business Development
10 107 (14.48%) IT Strategy
11 104 (14.07%) Risk Management
12 94 (12.72%) Technology Strategy
13 74 (10.01%) Cybersecurity
14 70 (9.47%) Technology Roadmap
15 69 (9.34%) Business Strategy
16 66 (8.93%) Customer Experience
17 64 (8.66%) DevOps
18 62 (8.39%) Thought Leadership
Programming Languages
1 67 (9.07%) Python
2 56 (7.58%) SQL
3 32 (4.33%) Java
4 12 (1.62%) PowerShell
5 7 (0.95%) JavaScript
5 7 (0.95%) TypeScript
6 5 (0.68%) Scala
7 4 (0.54%) PHP
7 4 (0.54%) R
8 2 (0.27%) Bash
8 2 (0.27%) Go
9 1 (0.14%) Bicep
9 1 (0.14%) C#
9 1 (0.14%) Korn
9 1 (0.14%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 143 (19.35%) Degree
2 43 (5.82%) Master's Degree
3 39 (5.28%) Security Cleared
4 33 (4.47%) CISSP
5 28 (3.79%) CISM
6 25 (3.38%) Cisco Certification
7 21 (2.84%) SC Cleared
8 18 (2.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 18 (2.44%) CCSP
9 15 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 12 (1.62%) ACCA
10 12 (1.62%) Azure Certification
10 12 (1.62%) CIMA
10 12 (1.62%) MBA
10 12 (1.62%) TOGAF Certification
11 9 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
12 8 (1.08%) Postgraduate
13 7 (0.95%) CRISC
14 6 (0.81%) DBS Check
14 6 (0.81%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (6.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 41 (5.55%) QA
3 39 (5.28%) Accessibility
4 37 (5.01%) NIST
5 34 (4.60%) GDPR
6 15 (2.03%) GRC
7 13 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials
8 12 (1.62%) Data Quality
9 11 (1.49%) PCI DSS
10 9 (1.22%) EU AI Act
11 7 (0.95%) COBIT
12 6 (0.81%) PMO
12 6 (0.81%) SOC 2
13 5 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 4 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
14 4 (0.54%) SLA
14 4 (0.54%) SOC 1
15 3 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 3 (0.41%) WCAG
16 2 (0.27%) NCSC
System Software
1 16 (2.17%) Active Directory
2 13 (1.76%) Docker
3 11 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (0.81%) IAG
5 3 (0.41%) vSphere
6 2 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.14%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 18 (2.44%) Kubernetes
2 11 (1.49%) Terraform
3 8 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (0.68%) Ansible
5 4 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.41%) Plesk
7 2 (0.27%) Autotask
7 2 (0.27%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 1 (0.14%) SCCM
8 1 (0.14%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 58 (7.85%) Microsoft
2 22 (2.98%) Salesforce
3 21 (2.84%) NEC
4 17 (2.30%) SAP
5 14 (1.89%) Foundry
5 14 (1.89%) Oracle
5 14 (1.89%) Palantir
6 13 (1.76%) Databricks
6 13 (1.76%) VMware
7 9 (1.22%) Google
7 9 (1.22%) HubSpot
8 8 (1.08%) BT
8 8 (1.08%) Cisco
9 7 (0.95%) Guidewire
10 6 (0.81%) Red Hat
10 6 (0.81%) ServiceNow
11 5 (0.68%) Freshdesk
11 5 (0.68%) HP
12 4 (0.54%) BeyondTrust
12 4 (0.54%) Facebook