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 20 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 285 399 299
Rank change year-on-year +114 -100 -63
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 478 314 725
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.70% 0.64% 0.97%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 0.69% 1.10%
Number of salaries quoted 166 114 473
10th Percentile £44,375 £56,250 £44,678
25th Percentile £61,250 £72,500 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £90,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +12.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £121,250 £127,375 £117,236
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £89,500 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.79% +12.39% -0.46%

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 54,345 45,260 66,146
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 79.25% 92.54% 88.33%
Number of salaries quoted 32,629 22,226 51,183
10th Percentile £29,000 £34,000 £29,490
25th Percentile £38,000 £46,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -12.00%
75th Percentile £76,000 £81,250 £75,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £102,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.33%

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 20 February 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 20 February 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 +109 406 £80,000 -7.51% 822
London +94 257 £85,750 -4.72% 440
UK excluding London +23 156 £70,000 -21.79% 535
Work from Home +51 89 £80,000 -4.97% 349
South East +6 48 £53,750 -25.86% 209
North of England -4 41 £75,000 - 113
North West +5 34 £70,000 -19.08% 67
East of England +23 27 £60,100 -32.85% 54
Scotland -22 18 £80,000 -20.00% 25
South West -8 10 £53,750 -30.65% 57
Midlands -1 9 £75,000 - 60
West Midlands +10 6 £75,000 - 35
Yorkshire -34 5 £90,000 +44.00% 35
North East -9 2 - - 11
East Midlands - 2 £75,000 - 24
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 11
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 12

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 9 (1.88%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.26%) CMS
3 5 (1.05%) IIS
3 5 (1.05%) WordPress
4 3 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.42%) Confluence
5 2 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.42%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.21%) CICS
6 1 (0.21%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.30%) Maya
1 11 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 9 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.26%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 6 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.84%) Adobe XD
4 4 (0.84%) InVision
4 4 (0.84%) Photoshop
4 4 (0.84%) Sketch
5 3 (0.63%) Adobe Illustrator
5 3 (0.63%) Elementor
6 2 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.42%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.21%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 16 (3.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (2.09%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.67%) Endur
4 5 (1.05%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.63%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.63%) Payment Gateway
5 3 (0.63%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.42%) NetSuite
6 2 (0.42%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.42%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.21%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.21%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.21%) SAP WM
7 1 (0.21%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 81 (16.95%) AWS
2 62 (12.97%) Azure
3 40 (8.37%) SaaS
4 33 (6.90%) GCP
5 25 (5.23%) Snowflake
6 13 (2.72%) GitHub
7 11 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (2.30%) Cloud Computing
7 11 (2.30%) Power Platform
8 10 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (1.88%) dbt
10 7 (1.46%) OCI
11 6 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
11 6 (1.26%) Matillion
11 6 (1.26%) Microsoft Copilot
12 5 (1.05%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (1.05%) Google Ads
12 5 (1.05%) Serverless
12 5 (1.05%) SuccessFactors
13 4 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.46%) Firewall
2 4 (0.84%) WAN
3 3 (0.63%) Intrusion Detection
3 3 (0.63%) Network Security
3 3 (0.63%) SD-WAN
3 3 (0.63%) Wireless
4 2 (0.42%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (0.42%) LAN
4 2 (0.42%) Tactical Data Link
4 2 (0.42%) WebEx
4 2 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.21%) BGP
5 1 (0.21%) Broadband
5 1 (0.21%) MPLS
5 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (4.39%) NoSQL
2 18 (3.77%) Data Warehouse
3 11 (2.30%) Big Data
4 10 (2.09%) Tableau
5 9 (1.88%) Power BI
6 8 (1.67%) Hadoop
6 8 (1.67%) Metadata
7 6 (1.26%) BigQuery
8 5 (1.05%) Data Lake
8 5 (1.05%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.84%) DataStage
9 4 (0.84%) QlikView
9 4 (0.84%) SAP HANA
10 3 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.63%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.63%) SQL Server
11 2 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.42%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.42%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.42%) SAP Data Services
Development Applications
1 13 (2.72%) ERwin
2 6 (1.26%) GitLab
2 6 (1.26%) MLflow
3 5 (1.05%) Cucumber
3 5 (1.05%) JIRA
4 4 (0.84%) Axure RP
4 4 (0.84%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.84%) PowerDesigner
5 1 (0.21%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.21%) Git
5 1 (0.21%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.21%) Selenium
5 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
General
1 197 (41.21%) Finance
2 133 (27.82%) Social Skills
3 104 (21.76%) Analytical Skills
4 90 (18.83%) Marketing
5 58 (12.13%) Law
6 49 (10.25%) Public Sector
7 44 (9.21%) Legal
8 40 (8.37%) Presentation Skills
9 39 (8.16%) Games
10 37 (7.74%) Retail
11 36 (7.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 31 (6.49%) Banking
13 25 (5.23%) Influencing Skills
14 16 (3.35%) Financial Institution
14 16 (3.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 12 (2.51%) Aerospace
15 12 (2.51%) Publishing
16 9 (1.88%) Manufacturing
17 8 (1.67%) Telecoms
18 7 (1.46%) Brand Awareness
Job Titles
1 93 (19.46%) Lead
2 87 (18.20%) Senior
3 80 (16.74%) Architect
4 58 (12.13%) Consultant
5 36 (7.53%) Account Executive
6 26 (5.44%) Sales Executive
6 26 (5.44%) Senior Sales Executive
7 21 (4.39%) Solutions Architect
8 20 (4.18%) Business Architect
8 20 (4.18%) Senior Manager
9 19 (3.97%) Data Architect
10 18 (3.77%) Business Development Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Business Sales Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Sales Account Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Senior Account Executive
10 18 (3.77%) Senior Architect
10 18 (3.77%) Senior Consultant
11 17 (3.56%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 17 (3.56%) Lead Architect
12 15 (3.14%) Marketing Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.72%) REST
2 12 (2.51%) Spring
3 11 (2.30%) Spring Boot
4 10 (2.09%) React
5 7 (1.46%) Kafka
6 6 (1.26%) CSS
6 6 (1.26%) HTML
6 6 (1.26%) OAuth
6 6 (1.26%) SOAP
7 5 (1.05%) AngularJS
7 5 (1.05%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.05%) Play Framework
7 5 (1.05%) PyTorch
7 5 (1.05%) TensorFlow
8 4 (0.84%) .NET
9 3 (0.63%) Middleware
9 3 (0.63%) Oracle Fusion
9 3 (0.63%) Vue
10 2 (0.42%) SAP Fiori
10 2 (0.42%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 43 (9.00%) Life Science
2 33 (6.90%) Self-Motivation
3 31 (6.49%) Enterprise Software
4 25 (5.23%) Algorithms
5 24 (5.02%) Cloud Native
6 23 (4.81%) Blog
7 17 (3.56%) Product Ownership
7 17 (3.56%) Social Media
8 16 (3.35%) Management Information System
9 14 (2.93%) Onboarding
10 13 (2.72%) Data Structures
10 13 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
11 11 (2.30%) Web Conferencing
12 10 (2.09%) AI Agents
12 10 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.88%) Credit Risk
14 8 (1.67%) Virtual Team
15 7 (1.46%) e-Learning
15 7 (1.46%) NHS
15 7 (1.46%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.21%) Android
1 1 (0.21%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (35.77%) AI
2 139 (29.08%) Analytics
3 132 (27.62%) Roadmaps
4 121 (25.31%) Agile
5 119 (24.90%) Business Development
6 112 (23.43%) Decision-Making
7 91 (19.04%) Mentoring
8 88 (18.41%) Business Strategy
9 84 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
10 75 (15.69%) Stakeholder Management
11 71 (14.85%) Computer Science
12 68 (14.23%) Generative AI
13 65 (13.60%) Machine Learning
14 60 (12.55%) Data Science
15 56 (11.72%) B2B
15 56 (11.72%) Cybersecurity
16 55 (11.51%) Workshop Facilitation
17 52 (10.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 50 (10.46%) Project Management
18 50 (10.46%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 40 (8.37%) Python
2 27 (5.65%) SQL
3 25 (5.23%) Java
4 12 (2.51%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.26%) C#
5 6 (1.26%) Kotlin
5 6 (1.26%) R
5 6 (1.26%) Scala
6 3 (0.63%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.42%) Go
8 1 (0.21%) ABAP
8 1 (0.21%) Bash
8 1 (0.21%) Ruby
8 1 (0.21%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 142 (29.71%) Degree
2 72 (15.06%) Master's Degree
3 49 (10.25%) PhD
4 46 (9.62%) Security Cleared
5 28 (5.86%) SC Cleared
6 23 (4.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (2.93%) CISSP
8 13 (2.72%) CISM
9 12 (2.51%) DBS Check
10 10 (2.09%) AWS Certification
10 10 (2.09%) PMI Certification
10 10 (2.09%) PMP
11 9 (1.88%) Azure Certification
12 8 (1.67%) MBA
13 7 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
14 6 (1.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (1.05%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 5 (1.05%) Cisco Certification
15 5 (1.05%) DV Cleared
15 5 (1.05%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (6.07%) GxP
2 17 (3.56%) Accessibility
3 13 (2.72%) GDPR
3 13 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.51%) QA
5 11 (2.30%) NIST
6 10 (2.09%) Data Quality
6 10 (2.09%) GRC
6 10 (2.09%) PMO
7 8 (1.67%) EMIR
8 6 (1.26%) Actionable Recommendations
9 5 (1.05%) WCAG
10 4 (0.84%) JSP 440
11 3 (0.63%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.63%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 3 (0.63%) NCSC
11 3 (0.63%) SLA
12 2 (0.42%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.42%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (0.84%) Docker
2 1 (0.21%) Active Directory
2 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 17 (3.56%) Terraform
2 5 (1.05%) Kubernetes
3 3 (0.63%) Ansible
3 3 (0.63%) Grafana
4 2 (0.42%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.42%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 31 (6.49%) Dell
1 31 (6.49%) SAP
2 30 (6.28%) Microsoft
3 22 (4.60%) Oracle
4 20 (4.18%) Google
5 18 (3.77%) Databricks
6 13 (2.72%) ServiceNow
7 12 (2.51%) HubSpot
8 11 (2.30%) Adobe
9 10 (2.09%) IBM
9 10 (2.09%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.67%) OpenLink
11 6 (1.26%) Cognizant
11 6 (1.26%) Workday
12 5 (1.05%) BT
13 4 (0.84%) Informatica
14 3 (0.63%) Facebook
14 3 (0.63%) Fortinet
14 3 (0.63%) Instagram
14 3 (0.63%) MuleSoft