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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 303 256 402
Rank change year-on-year -47 +146 -144
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 587 563 650
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.25% 0.59%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.36% 0.73%
Number of salaries quoted 241 155 412
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £57,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £81,500 £75,000
Median % change year-on-year -1.84% +8.67% -9.09%
75th Percentile £100,000 £101,875 £99,000
90th Percentile £115,000 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £70,000 £77,500
% change year-on-year - -9.68% +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 68,936 41,540 89,299
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.11% 92.39% 81.68%
Number of salaries quoted 47,487 22,330 63,275
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,824 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +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 21 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 21 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 -46 533 £80,000 +1.59% 188
London -14 327 £85,000 - 142
UK excluding London -80 202 £70,000 - 62
Work from Home +10 131 £70,000 -15.15% 76
North of England -13 72 £90,000 +5.88% 11
North West +10 47 £95,000 +0.38% 7
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 4
Midlands -5 35 £80,000 +77.78% 7
South East -107 29 £37,500 -42.31% 31
West Midlands -23 19 £80,000 +77.78% 1
Yorkshire -30 18 £76,840 +2.45% 1
East Midlands -10 16 £50,000 - 6
South West -53 10 £59,750 -27.58% 6
Scotland -6 7 £95,000 - 2
North East -43 7 £100,000 +71.67% 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 (2.39%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (0.85%) Apache Spark
3 5 (0.85%) CMS
4 4 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.68%) Confluence
5 2 (0.34%) IIS
5 2 (0.34%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
5 2 (0.34%) WordPress
6 1 (0.17%) Apache
6 1 (0.17%) Drupal
6 1 (0.17%) nginx
6 1 (0.17%) SAS
Applications
1 10 (1.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.34%) Adobe XD
4 2 (0.34%) InVision
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.34%) Sketch
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 22 (3.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.02%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.85%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.68%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.51%) SAP MDG-BP
6 2 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.17%) Magento
7 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
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
1 121 (20.61%) AWS
2 81 (13.80%) Azure
3 60 (10.22%) SaaS
4 47 (8.01%) GCP
5 30 (5.11%) Snowflake
6 22 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (3.24%) Serverless
8 16 (2.73%) Cloud Computing
9 13 (2.21%) Power Platform
10 11 (1.87%) PaaS
11 10 (1.70%) GitHub
12 8 (1.36%) Amazon Bedrock
12 8 (1.36%) Azure AI
12 8 (1.36%) SuccessFactors
13 7 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (1.19%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (1.02%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Purview
15 5 (0.85%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (0.85%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 18 (3.07%) Firewall
2 7 (1.19%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.19%) Network Security
2 7 (1.19%) Wireless
3 6 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.02%) SD-WAN
3 6 (1.02%) WAN
3 6 (1.02%) WebEx
4 5 (0.85%) Broadband
4 5 (0.85%) Internet
5 4 (0.68%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.68%) LAN
5 4 (0.68%) WLAN
6 3 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.34%) SSL
7 2 (0.34%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) SMS
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.77%) Data Lake
3 18 (3.07%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.87%) Power BI
5 8 (1.36%) Big Data
6 5 (0.85%) Metadata
7 4 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.68%) Delta Lake
7 4 (0.68%) SAP HANA
8 3 (0.51%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.51%) Hadoop
8 3 (0.51%) Semantic Layer
8 3 (0.51%) Tableau
9 2 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
9 2 (0.34%) BusinessObjects
9 2 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.34%) SAP BW
9 2 (0.34%) SQL Server
10 1 (0.17%) InterSystems Cache
10 1 (0.17%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 16 (2.73%) Cucumber
1 16 (2.73%) GitLab
2 6 (1.02%) MLflow
3 4 (0.68%) JIRA
4 3 (0.51%) Git
4 3 (0.51%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.34%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.34%) Maven
5 2 (0.34%) 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
1 206 (35.09%) Finance
2 157 (26.75%) Social Skills
3 105 (17.89%) Marketing
4 99 (16.87%) Analytical Skills
5 83 (14.14%) Public Sector
6 61 (10.39%) Presentation Skills
7 58 (9.88%) Retail
8 44 (7.50%) Banking
9 38 (6.47%) Legal
10 36 (6.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 30 (5.11%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (3.41%) Financial Institution
13 18 (3.07%) Brand Awareness
14 16 (2.73%) Law
15 13 (2.21%) Manufacturing
15 13 (2.21%) Telecoms
16 11 (1.87%) Aerospace
16 11 (1.87%) Organisational Skills
17 10 (1.70%) Pharmaceutical
18 8 (1.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 154 (26.24%) Senior
2 94 (16.01%) Architect
3 84 (14.31%) Consultant
4 73 (12.44%) Lead
5 60 (10.22%) Account Executive
6 58 (9.88%) Sales Executive
7 46 (7.84%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.81%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.64%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.79%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.62%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.62%) Sales Account Executive
12 26 (4.43%) Senior Architect
13 25 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
14 24 (4.09%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (4.09%) Java Engineer
14 24 (4.09%) Product Specialist
14 24 (4.09%) Senior Consultant
15 21 (3.58%) Lead Architect
15 21 (3.58%) Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (3.92%) Kafka
2 22 (3.75%) Spring
2 22 (3.75%) Spring Boot
3 6 (1.02%) LangChain
3 6 (1.02%) LangGraph
3 6 (1.02%) REST
3 6 (1.02%) SOAP
3 6 (1.02%) XML
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth
4 5 (0.85%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.85%) PyTorch
4 5 (0.85%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.68%) PySpark
5 4 (0.68%) VML
6 3 (0.51%) CSS
6 3 (0.51%) FastAPI
6 3 (0.51%) Flutter
6 3 (0.51%) HTML
6 3 (0.51%) React
7 2 (0.34%) CrewAI
Miscellaneous
1 55 (9.37%) Cloud Native
2 43 (7.33%) Enterprise Software
3 26 (4.43%) Blog
3 26 (4.43%) Onboarding
4 22 (3.75%) e-Learning
5 19 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
6 18 (3.07%) Life Science
6 18 (3.07%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.07%) Product Ownership
7 17 (2.90%) AI Agents
8 16 (2.73%) Public Cloud
9 14 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
9 14 (2.39%) Web Conferencing
10 12 (2.04%) Legacy Applications
11 11 (1.87%) Data Fabric
11 11 (1.87%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.70%) Enterprise Cloud
12 10 (1.70%) Security Posture
12 10 (1.70%) Social Media
13 8 (1.36%) Podcast
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.85%) Windows
2 4 (0.68%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (31.35%) Business Development
2 177 (30.15%) AI
3 167 (28.45%) Decision-Making
4 153 (26.06%) Mentoring
5 132 (22.49%) Analytics
6 130 (22.15%) Roadmaps
7 98 (16.70%) Agile
8 77 (13.12%) Stakeholder Management
9 76 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
10 70 (11.93%) Business Strategy
11 69 (11.75%) Workshop Facilitation
12 68 (11.58%) DevOps
13 62 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 62 (10.56%) Strategic Thinking
14 61 (10.39%) B2B
15 59 (10.05%) Cybersecurity
16 56 (9.54%) CI/CD
16 56 (9.54%) Coaching
17 52 (8.86%) Machine Learning
17 52 (8.86%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 47 (8.01%) Java
2 43 (7.33%) Python
3 28 (4.77%) SQL
4 10 (1.70%) R
5 5 (0.85%) Kotlin
6 4 (0.68%) PowerShell
7 3 (0.51%) C#
7 3 (0.51%) Go
8 2 (0.34%) ABAP
8 2 (0.34%) Bicep
8 2 (0.34%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.34%) Scala
9 1 (0.17%) Bash
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 147 (25.04%) Degree
2 69 (11.75%) Security Cleared
3 37 (6.30%) SC Cleared
4 25 (4.26%) AWS Certification
5 23 (3.92%) Master's Degree
6 21 (3.58%) CISSP
7 20 (3.41%) CISM
8 19 (3.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 15 (2.56%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.39%) DV Cleared
11 11 (1.87%) DBS Check
12 10 (1.70%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 9 (1.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 9 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (1.53%) CRISC
13 9 (1.53%) MBA
14 7 (1.19%) GSEC
14 7 (1.19%) PhD
15 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.62%) GRC
2 23 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (3.58%) NIST
4 18 (3.07%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.39%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.39%) JSP 440
6 13 (2.21%) GDPR
7 9 (1.53%) EU AI Act
7 9 (1.53%) PCI DSS
7 9 (1.53%) QA
8 8 (1.36%) Basel III
8 8 (1.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 8 (1.36%) SLA
9 7 (1.19%) Government Security Classifications
10 6 (1.02%) GxP
11 3 (0.51%) IFRS
12 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
12 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 16 (2.73%) Docker
2 6 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 19 (3.24%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.73%) Terraform
3 11 (1.87%) Ansible
4 5 (0.85%) Puppet
5 4 (0.68%) Argo
6 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.34%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.34%) 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 (16.35%) Dell
2 53 (9.03%) Microsoft
3 40 (6.81%) SAP
4 34 (5.79%) Databricks
5 25 (4.26%) Informatica
6 24 (4.09%) Denodo
6 24 (4.09%) Teradata
7 22 (3.75%) Salesforce
7 22 (3.75%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.24%) Google
9 15 (2.56%) Foundry
10 14 (2.39%) Oracle
10 14 (2.39%) Palantir
11 13 (2.21%) HubSpot
12 6 (1.02%) Aruba
12 6 (1.02%) Cisco
12 6 (1.02%) Cognizant
12 6 (1.02%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.02%) Juniper
12 6 (1.02%) OpenAI