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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 306 260 415
Rank change year-on-year -46 +155 -153
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 599 573 616
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.23% 0.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.35% 0.71%
Number of salaries quoted 246 160 393
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £57,500 £51,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £73,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +13.01% -11.52%
75th Percentile £100,000 £100,938 £97,500
90th Percentile £116,250 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £71,250 £67,500 £77,500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -12.90% +10.71%

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 70,675 42,514 86,697
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.44% 91.57% 82.17%
Number of salaries quoted 48,811 23,148 61,276
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,171 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.34% - -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 30 June 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 30 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 -46 546 £80,000 - 238
London -20 340 £83,750 -6.94% 183
UK excluding London -74 197 £71,250 +5.56% 71
Work from Home -12 131 £70,000 -15.15% 90
North of England -36 73 £95,000 +5.77% 19
North West +9 48 £95,000 +0.38% 13
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 3
Midlands -22 35 £80,000 +77.78% 7
South East -110 26 £37,500 -40.00% 28
West Midlands -24 19 £80,000 +77.78%
Yorkshire -25 18 £76,840 +2.45% 3
East Midlands -12 16 £50,000 - 7
South West -55 10 £59,750 -27.58% 10
North East -44 7 £100,000 +71.67% 3
Scotland +3 4 £110,000 +15.79% 3
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 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 14 (2.34%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.17%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.83%) CMS
5 4 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.67%) Confluence
6 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.33%) WordPress
7 1 (0.17%) Apache
7 1 (0.17%) Drupal
7 1 (0.17%) IIS
7 1 (0.17%) nginx
7 1 (0.17%) SAS
Applications
1 10 (1.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.33%) Adobe XD
3 2 (0.33%) InVision
3 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.33%) Sketch
4 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 23 (3.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.83%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.67%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.50%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-BP
6 2 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.17%) Magento
7 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.17%) Summit
7 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 129 (21.54%) AWS
2 83 (13.86%) Azure
3 60 (10.02%) SaaS
4 47 (7.85%) GCP
5 29 (4.84%) Snowflake
6 24 (4.01%) AWS CloudFormation
7 20 (3.34%) Cloud Computing
7 20 (3.34%) Serverless
8 14 (2.34%) Power Platform
9 11 (1.84%) Amazon Bedrock
9 11 (1.84%) PaaS
10 10 (1.67%) GitHub
11 9 (1.50%) Azure AI
12 8 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (1.34%) SuccessFactors
13 7 (1.17%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (1.00%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (1.00%) Amazon S3
14 6 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.01%) Firewall
2 7 (1.17%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.17%) Network Security
2 7 (1.17%) Wireless
3 6 (1.00%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.00%) SD-WAN
3 6 (1.00%) WAN
3 6 (1.00%) WebEx
4 5 (0.83%) Broadband
4 5 (0.83%) Internet
5 4 (0.67%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.67%) LAN
5 4 (0.67%) WLAN
6 3 (0.50%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.33%) SSL
7 2 (0.33%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) SMS
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.67%) Data Lake
3 21 (3.51%) NoSQL
4 12 (2.00%) Power BI
5 7 (1.17%) Big Data
6 5 (0.83%) Metadata
7 4 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.67%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.67%) Hadoop
7 4 (0.67%) SAP HANA
8 3 (0.50%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.50%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.33%) BusinessObjects
9 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.33%) SAP BW
9 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.33%) Tableau
10 1 (0.17%) Redis
10 1 (0.17%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 18 (3.01%) Cucumber
1 18 (3.01%) GitLab
2 6 (1.00%) MLflow
3 4 (0.67%) JIRA
4 3 (0.50%) Git
4 3 (0.50%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.33%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.33%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.33%) Maven
5 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.17%) Gatling
6 1 (0.17%) JMeter
6 1 (0.17%) mountebank
6 1 (0.17%) Selenium
6 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 205 (34.22%) Finance
2 163 (27.21%) Social Skills
3 102 (17.03%) Marketing
4 100 (16.69%) Analytical Skills
5 89 (14.86%) Public Sector
6 62 (10.35%) Presentation Skills
7 58 (9.68%) Retail
8 45 (7.51%) Banking
9 40 (6.68%) Legal
10 35 (5.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 31 (5.18%) Influencing Skills
12 19 (3.17%) Financial Institution
13 17 (2.84%) Brand Awareness
14 14 (2.34%) Law
14 14 (2.34%) Telecoms
15 13 (2.17%) Manufacturing
16 11 (1.84%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (1.67%) Aerospace
18 7 (1.17%) Automotive
18 7 (1.17%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 153 (25.54%) Senior
2 97 (16.19%) Architect
3 85 (14.19%) Consultant
4 74 (12.35%) Lead
5 59 (9.85%) Sales Executive
6 58 (9.68%) Account Executive
7 44 (7.35%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.68%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.51%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.68%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.51%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.51%) Sales Account Executive
12 26 (4.34%) Senior Architect
12 26 (4.34%) Senior Consultant
13 25 (4.17%) Java Engineer
13 25 (4.17%) Solutions Architect
14 24 (4.01%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (4.01%) Product Specialist
15 22 (3.67%) Lead Architect
15 22 (3.67%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (4.51%) Kafka
2 23 (3.84%) Spring
2 23 (3.84%) Spring Boot
3 7 (1.17%) LangChain
3 7 (1.17%) LangGraph
4 6 (1.00%) REST
4 6 (1.00%) SOAP
4 6 (1.00%) XML
5 5 (0.83%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.83%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.67%) FastAPI
6 4 (0.67%) OAuth
6 4 (0.67%) OAuth2
6 4 (0.67%) PySpark
6 4 (0.67%) VML
7 3 (0.50%) CSS
7 3 (0.50%) Flutter
7 3 (0.50%) HTML
7 3 (0.50%) React
8 2 (0.33%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 57 (9.52%) Cloud Native
2 45 (7.51%) Enterprise Software
3 30 (5.01%) Onboarding
4 26 (4.34%) Blog
5 24 (4.01%) e-Learning
6 20 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
7 19 (3.17%) Public Cloud
8 18 (3.01%) Management Information System
8 18 (3.01%) Product Ownership
9 17 (2.84%) AI Agents
10 15 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (2.34%) Life Science
12 13 (2.17%) Web Conferencing
13 12 (2.00%) Legacy Applications
14 11 (1.84%) Data Fabric
14 11 (1.84%) Greenfield Project
15 10 (1.67%) Enterprise Cloud
15 10 (1.67%) Security Posture
16 9 (1.50%) Social Media
17 8 (1.34%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.83%) Windows
2 4 (0.67%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (30.88%) AI
2 183 (30.55%) Business Development
3 165 (27.55%) Decision-Making
4 159 (26.54%) Mentoring
5 133 (22.20%) Analytics
5 133 (22.20%) Roadmaps
6 103 (17.20%) Agile
7 83 (13.86%) Stakeholder Management
8 76 (12.69%) Problem-Solving
9 70 (11.69%) Business Strategy
10 69 (11.52%) DevOps
11 67 (11.19%) Workshop Facilitation
12 65 (10.85%) Continuous Improvement
13 63 (10.52%) B2B
13 63 (10.52%) Cybersecurity
13 63 (10.52%) Strategic Thinking
14 59 (9.85%) CI/CD
15 57 (9.52%) Coaching
16 53 (8.85%) Machine Learning
17 52 (8.68%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 47 (7.85%) Java
2 43 (7.18%) Python
3 31 (5.18%) SQL
4 9 (1.50%) R
5 4 (0.67%) Kotlin
5 4 (0.67%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.50%) C#
6 3 (0.50%) Go
7 2 (0.33%) ABAP
7 2 (0.33%) Bicep
7 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.17%) Bash
8 1 (0.17%) PHP
8 1 (0.17%) Scala
Qualifications
1 154 (25.71%) Degree
2 75 (12.52%) Security Cleared
3 41 (6.84%) SC Cleared
4 31 (5.18%) AWS Certification
5 24 (4.01%) CISSP
6 23 (3.84%) CISM
7 21 (3.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 20 (3.34%) Master's Degree
9 15 (2.50%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.34%) DV Cleared
11 13 (2.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 12 (2.00%) CRISC
13 11 (1.84%) DBS Check
14 10 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 9 (1.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 9 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
16 8 (1.34%) MBA
17 7 (1.17%) GSEC
18 6 (1.00%) CISA
18 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (6.01%) GRC
2 28 (4.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.67%) NIST
4 17 (2.84%) Accessibility
4 17 (2.84%) GDPR
5 14 (2.34%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.34%) JSP 440
6 10 (1.67%) PCI DSS
7 9 (1.50%) EU AI Act
7 9 (1.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 9 (1.50%) QA
8 8 (1.34%) Basel III
8 8 (1.34%) SLA
9 7 (1.17%) Government Security Classifications
10 5 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.67%) GxP
12 3 (0.50%) IFRS
13 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.33%) PMO
System Software
1 17 (2.84%) Docker
2 6 (1.00%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 20 (3.34%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.67%) Terraform
3 11 (1.84%) Ansible
4 5 (0.83%) Puppet
5 4 (0.67%) Argo
6 3 (0.50%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.33%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.33%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.33%) Salt
8 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.17%) Consul
8 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.17%) Grafana
8 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.03%) Dell
2 57 (9.52%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.34%) SAP
4 33 (5.51%) Databricks
5 25 (4.17%) Informatica
6 24 (4.01%) Denodo
6 24 (4.01%) Teradata
7 22 (3.67%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.67%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.17%) Google
9 15 (2.50%) Foundry
10 14 (2.34%) Palantir
11 13 (2.17%) HubSpot
12 9 (1.50%) Oracle
13 6 (1.00%) Aruba
13 6 (1.00%) Cisco
13 6 (1.00%) Cognizant
13 6 (1.00%) Fortinet
13 6 (1.00%) Juniper
13 6 (1.00%) OpenAI