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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 332 236 463
Rank change year-on-year -96 +227 -205
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 605 639 392
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.56% 1.28% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.76% 1.44% 0.58%
Number of salaries quoted 252 164 228
10th Percentile £47,050 £45,000 £47,421
25th Percentile £62,500 £59,688 £62,438
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £87,000 £82,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% +3.13% -
75th Percentile £110,000 £106,563 £101,250
90th Percentile £122,500 £132,000 £140,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £72,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +10.34% -9.38% +6.67%

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 79,759 44,399 67,357
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.20% 88.84% 80.67%
Number of salaries quoted 55,200 25,247 42,330
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -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 26 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 26 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 -84 553 £90,000 +10.43% 202
London -56 361 £95,000 +7.04% 126
UK excluding London -104 197 £80,000 +10.34% 120
Work from Home +6 142 £72,500 -12.12% 98
North of England -33 61 £95,000 +0.38% 20
Midlands -19 38 £80,000 +23.08% 15
North West -4 35 £95,000 +0.38% 12
South East -118 30 £55,000 +30.95% 18
East of England - 27 £60,100 - 4
West Midlands -25 23 £80,000 +39.13% 7
Wales - 19 £55,000 - 2
East Midlands -6 15 £70,000 - 8
Yorkshire -34 15 £72,170 -15.09% 7
South West -66 15 £59,750 -25.31% 45
North East -53 11 £100,000 +17.65% 1
Scotland -7 6 £110,000 +37.50% 10
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 16 (2.64%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.83%) Confluence
5 4 (0.66%) CMS
6 3 (0.50%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.50%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.17%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 6 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.50%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.50%) Summit
5 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.17%) Magento
6 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 176 (29.09%) AWS
2 100 (16.53%) Azure
3 62 (10.25%) SaaS
4 57 (9.42%) GCP
5 35 (5.79%) Cloud Computing
6 31 (5.12%) AWS CloudFormation
7 29 (4.79%) Snowflake
8 26 (4.30%) Serverless
9 18 (2.98%) Power Platform
10 16 (2.64%) Amazon Bedrock
11 15 (2.48%) Azure AI
12 13 (2.15%) GitHub
13 9 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.49%) Amazon S3
13 9 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (1.49%) PaaS
14 8 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
14 8 (1.32%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (1.32%) Microsoft 365
15 7 (1.16%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.48%) Firewall
2 10 (1.65%) Internet
3 9 (1.49%) WAN
3 9 (1.49%) Wireless
4 8 (1.32%) SD-WAN
5 7 (1.16%) Broadband
5 7 (1.16%) Cisco ISE
5 7 (1.16%) Cisco Wireless
5 7 (1.16%) LAN
5 7 (1.16%) WebEx
5 7 (1.16%) WLAN
6 4 (0.66%) Network Security
7 3 (0.50%) Intrusion Detection
7 3 (0.50%) SSL
8 2 (0.33%) AMQP
8 2 (0.33%) BGP
8 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.33%) MQTT
8 2 (0.33%) OSPF
8 2 (0.33%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.45%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.79%) Data Lake
3 25 (4.13%) NoSQL
4 20 (3.31%) Data Mining
4 20 (3.31%) Tableau
5 17 (2.81%) Amazon QuickSight
6 16 (2.64%) Power BI
7 7 (1.16%) Big Data
7 7 (1.16%) Metadata
8 5 (0.83%) Geospatial Data
8 5 (0.83%) SAP HANA
9 4 (0.66%) BusinessObjects
9 4 (0.66%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.66%) Hadoop
10 3 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.50%) Semantic Layer
10 3 (0.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.33%) Power Query
11 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 22 (3.64%) GitLab
2 21 (3.47%) Cucumber
3 6 (0.99%) Git
3 6 (0.99%) Jenkins
3 6 (0.99%) Maven
3 6 (0.99%) MLflow
4 5 (0.83%) JIRA
5 4 (0.66%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.33%) Ant
6 2 (0.33%) Apache Ivy
6 2 (0.33%) Balsamiq
6 2 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
6 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
7 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.17%) Gatling
7 1 (0.17%) JMeter
7 1 (0.17%) mountebank
7 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.17%) Vite
General
1 240 (39.67%) Finance
2 186 (30.74%) Social Skills
3 136 (22.48%) Marketing
4 101 (16.69%) Public Sector
5 74 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
6 62 (10.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 62 (10.25%) Retail
7 51 (8.43%) Banking
7 51 (8.43%) Presentation Skills
8 47 (7.77%) Influencing Skills
9 32 (5.29%) Legal
10 26 (4.30%) Law
11 22 (3.64%) Back Office
12 20 (3.31%) Brand Awareness
12 20 (3.31%) Financial Institution
13 17 (2.81%) Public Speaking
14 16 (2.64%) Telecoms
15 15 (2.48%) Aerospace
15 15 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
16 14 (2.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 130 (21.49%) Senior
2 113 (18.68%) Architect
3 68 (11.24%) Consultant
4 67 (11.07%) Lead
5 45 (7.44%) Senior Manager
6 35 (5.79%) Sales Executive
7 34 (5.62%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (4.96%) Product Manager
9 26 (4.30%) Senior Architect
10 24 (3.97%) Data Management Specialist
10 24 (3.97%) Lead Architect
10 24 (3.97%) Product Specialist
11 23 (3.80%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.64%) Business Development Executive
12 22 (3.64%) Senior Consultant
13 21 (3.47%) Java Engineer
13 21 (3.47%) Security Architect
14 20 (3.31%) Account Manager
14 20 (3.31%) Principal Engineer
14 20 (3.31%) Principal Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.29%) Kafka
2 22 (3.64%) Spring
2 22 (3.64%) Spring Boot
3 20 (3.31%) Terraform
4 12 (1.98%) LangGraph
5 11 (1.82%) LangChain
6 8 (1.32%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.99%) XML
8 5 (0.83%) CrewAI
8 5 (0.83%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.66%) PySpark
9 4 (0.66%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
9 4 (0.66%) React
9 4 (0.66%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.66%) VML
10 3 (0.50%) CSS
10 3 (0.50%) Middleware
10 3 (0.50%) OpenACC
10 3 (0.50%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 76 (12.56%) Cloud Native
2 62 (10.25%) Onboarding
3 42 (6.94%) Enterprise Software
4 40 (6.61%) Blog
5 25 (4.13%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (3.97%) AI Agents
6 24 (3.97%) e-Learning
6 24 (3.97%) Product Ownership
7 22 (3.64%) Public Cloud
8 20 (3.31%) Social Media
9 17 (2.81%) Web Conferencing
10 15 (2.48%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.98%) Management Information System
11 12 (1.98%) NHS
12 10 (1.65%) Enterprise Cloud
12 10 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.49%) Hackathon
13 9 (1.49%) Legacy Applications
14 8 (1.32%) Low-Code
15 7 (1.16%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.32%) Linux
2 6 (0.99%) Windows
3 3 (0.50%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.33%) Solaris
4 2 (0.33%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 224 (37.02%) AI
2 178 (29.42%) Mentoring
3 168 (27.77%) Business Development
4 167 (27.60%) Roadmaps
5 152 (25.12%) Analytics
6 148 (24.46%) Decision-Making
7 108 (17.85%) Agile
8 105 (17.36%) Stakeholder Management
9 78 (12.89%) Continuous Improvement
9 78 (12.89%) Machine Learning
10 72 (11.90%) CI/CD
10 72 (11.90%) DevOps
11 71 (11.74%) Problem-Solving
12 69 (11.40%) Coaching
13 68 (11.24%) B2B
14 65 (10.74%) Risk Management
15 63 (10.41%) Infrastructure as Code
16 61 (10.08%) Business Intelligence
17 60 (9.92%) Strategic Thinking
18 55 (9.09%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 76 (12.56%) Python
2 55 (9.09%) SQL
3 42 (6.94%) Java
4 11 (1.82%) R
5 5 (0.83%) Bash
5 5 (0.83%) PowerShell
6 4 (0.66%) Go
7 3 (0.50%) C#
8 2 (0.33%) ABAP
8 2 (0.33%) Bicep
8 2 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.33%) Scala
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
9 1 (0.17%) Ruby
9 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 153 (25.29%) Degree
2 93 (15.37%) Security Cleared
3 63 (10.41%) SC Cleared
4 42 (6.94%) AWS Certification
5 25 (4.13%) Master's Degree
6 24 (3.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 18 (2.98%) Azure Certification
7 18 (2.98%) CISSP
7 18 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (2.64%) CISM
9 15 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 12 (1.98%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 10 (1.65%) MBA
12 9 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
12 9 (1.49%) CRISC
13 8 (1.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (1.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 7 (1.16%) DBS Check
15 6 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (4.30%) GRC
3 22 (3.64%) GDPR
4 21 (3.47%) NIST
5 19 (3.14%) Accessibility
6 18 (2.98%) Data Quality
7 13 (2.15%) QA
8 11 (1.82%) SLA
9 10 (1.65%) PCI DSS
10 9 (1.49%) JSP 440
11 7 (1.16%) Basel III
11 7 (1.16%) EU AI Act
11 7 (1.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 5 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
13 4 (0.66%) IFRS
13 4 (0.66%) PMO
14 3 (0.50%) Government Security Classifications
14 3 (0.50%) NCSC
14 3 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 2 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 23 (3.80%) Docker
2 5 (0.83%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 28 (4.63%) Kubernetes
2 14 (2.31%) Ansible
3 7 (1.16%) Puppet
4 5 (0.83%) Progress Chef
5 4 (0.66%) Argo
6 2 (0.33%) Salt
7 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.17%) AppManager
7 1 (0.17%) Consul
7 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
7 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.17%) Packer
7 1 (0.17%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 61 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 54 (8.93%) Dell
3 39 (6.45%) Databricks
4 32 (5.29%) SAP
5 27 (4.46%) Informatica
6 26 (4.30%) Google
7 25 (4.13%) Teradata
8 24 (3.97%) Denodo
9 21 (3.47%) Salesforce
10 19 (3.14%) Foundry
11 17 (2.81%) ServiceNow
12 16 (2.64%) Palantir
13 11 (1.82%) Cisco
14 10 (1.65%) OpenAI
14 10 (1.65%) Oracle
15 8 (1.32%) Fortinet
16 7 (1.16%) Aruba
16 7 (1.16%) HubSpot
16 7 (1.16%) Juniper
17 6 (0.99%) Cognizant