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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 337 252 448
Rank change year-on-year -85 +196 -181
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 621 595 366
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.53% 1.21% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.73% 1.36% 0.58%
Number of salaries quoted 282 151 187
10th Percentile £48,875 £43,750 £48,250
25th Percentile £63,750 £58,750 £64,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% - -
75th Percentile £110,938 £105,000 £97,500
90th Percentile £119,963 £120,000 £113,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £65,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +23.08% -18.75% +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 84,898 43,727 63,303
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.06% 88.69% 81.28%
Number of salaries quoted 58,675 24,676 35,715
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,313 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 September 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 September 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 -101 556 £90,000 +16.13% 1,730
London -63 357 £100,000 +8.11% 1,286
UK excluding London -123 200 £80,000 +23.08% 535
Work from Home +1 147 £80,000 +23.08% 671
North of England -37 63 £90,000 +11.46% 170
Midlands -25 42 £80,000 +20.75% 57
North West -10 34 £95,000 +17.65% 118
South East -119 33 £90,000 +105.71% 110
West Midlands -37 26 £85,000 +38.78% 37
South West -63 20 £86,250 +7.81% 70
East of England - 20 £60,100 - 33
Yorkshire -29 18 £76,840 -9.60% 33
Wales -52 17 £55,000 +15.79% 14
East Midlands -20 16 £60,000 - 20
North East - 11 £100,000 - 19
Scotland +2 7 £110,000 +47.65% 54
Northern Ireland -82 1 - - 29

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 12 (1.93%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.97%) Confluence
4 5 (0.81%) CMS
5 4 (0.64%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.48%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.48%) SAS
7 2 (0.32%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.32%) WordPress
8 1 (0.16%) Apache
8 1 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) IIS
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.48%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 24 (3.86%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.97%) Distributed Ledger
2 6 (0.97%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.64%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.64%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.48%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.48%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.48%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.48%) Summit
5 2 (0.32%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.16%) Magento
6 1 (0.16%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 173 (27.86%) AWS
2 107 (17.23%) Azure
3 62 (9.98%) SaaS
4 56 (9.02%) GCP
5 34 (5.48%) Cloud Computing
6 33 (5.31%) AWS CloudFormation
7 23 (3.70%) Serverless
8 18 (2.90%) GitHub
9 16 (2.58%) Amazon Bedrock
9 16 (2.58%) Power Platform
10 13 (2.09%) Azure AI
10 13 (2.09%) Snowflake
11 10 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
12 9 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (1.45%) Amazon S3
12 9 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (1.45%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (1.45%) PaaS
13 8 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (1.13%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.77%) Firewall
2 10 (1.61%) Internet
3 9 (1.45%) WAN
4 8 (1.29%) SD-WAN
4 8 (1.29%) Wireless
5 7 (1.13%) Broadband
5 7 (1.13%) Cisco ISE
5 7 (1.13%) Cisco Wireless
5 7 (1.13%) LAN
5 7 (1.13%) WebEx
5 7 (1.13%) WLAN
6 2 (0.32%) AMQP
6 2 (0.32%) BGP
6 2 (0.32%) MQTT
6 2 (0.32%) Network Security
6 2 (0.32%) OSPF
6 2 (0.32%) SSL
6 2 (0.32%) VPN
7 1 (0.16%) GoToMeeting
7 1 (0.16%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (4.83%) NoSQL
2 20 (3.22%) Data Mining
3 19 (3.06%) Tableau
4 17 (2.74%) Amazon QuickSight
5 14 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 14 (2.25%) Power BI
6 13 (2.09%) Metadata
7 11 (1.77%) Data Lake
8 7 (1.13%) Big Data
9 5 (0.81%) Geospatial Data
9 5 (0.81%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.81%) SAP HANA
10 4 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.64%) BusinessObjects
10 4 (0.64%) Hadoop
10 4 (0.64%) Semantic Layer
11 3 (0.48%) PostgreSQL
11 3 (0.48%) RDBMS
11 3 (0.48%) SQL Server
11 3 (0.48%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (4.35%) GitLab
2 24 (3.86%) Cucumber
3 10 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.29%) Git
5 6 (0.97%) JIRA
5 6 (0.97%) Maven
6 5 (0.81%) MLflow
7 4 (0.64%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.48%) Vite
9 2 (0.32%) Ant
9 2 (0.32%) Apache Ivy
9 2 (0.32%) Balsamiq
9 2 (0.32%) IBM UrbanCode
9 2 (0.32%) rollup.js
10 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.16%) ERwin
10 1 (0.16%) Gatling
10 1 (0.16%) JMeter
10 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
General
1 255 (41.06%) Finance
2 206 (33.17%) Social Skills
3 152 (24.48%) Marketing
4 110 (17.71%) Public Sector
5 86 (13.85%) Analytical Skills
6 68 (10.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 58 (9.34%) Retail
8 55 (8.86%) Influencing Skills
9 48 (7.73%) Banking
10 44 (7.09%) Presentation Skills
11 41 (6.60%) Legal
12 30 (4.83%) Law
13 25 (4.03%) Brand Awareness
14 21 (3.38%) Back Office
15 18 (2.90%) Financial Institution
16 17 (2.74%) Manufacturing
17 16 (2.58%) Aerospace
17 16 (2.58%) Public Speaking
17 16 (2.58%) Telecoms
18 15 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 125 (20.13%) Senior
2 123 (19.81%) Architect
3 72 (11.59%) Lead
4 58 (9.34%) Consultant
5 45 (7.25%) Senior Manager
6 35 (5.64%) Solutions Architect
7 33 (5.31%) Product Manager
8 30 (4.83%) Senior Architect
9 25 (4.03%) Lead Architect
10 24 (3.86%) Java Engineer
11 23 (3.70%) Principal Engineer
11 23 (3.70%) Principal Java Engineer
11 23 (3.70%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.54%) Sales Executive
12 22 (3.54%) Security Architect
13 20 (3.22%) Digital Product Manager
13 20 (3.22%) Marketing Manager
13 20 (3.22%) Senior Digital Product Manager
14 19 (3.06%) Account Manager
14 19 (3.06%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.99%) Kafka
2 25 (4.03%) Spring
2 25 (4.03%) Spring Boot
3 22 (3.54%) Terraform
4 14 (2.25%) LangChain
4 14 (2.25%) LangGraph
5 10 (1.61%) FastAPI
6 7 (1.13%) CrewAI
7 6 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.81%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.81%) React
8 5 (0.81%) XML
9 4 (0.64%) Middleware
9 4 (0.64%) pgvector
9 4 (0.64%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.64%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.64%) VML
10 3 (0.48%) CSS
10 3 (0.48%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.48%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 90 (14.49%) Cloud Native
2 65 (10.47%) Onboarding
3 46 (7.41%) Enterprise Software
4 35 (5.64%) Blog
5 34 (5.48%) AI Agents
6 33 (5.31%) Distributed Systems
7 26 (4.19%) Product Ownership
8 25 (4.03%) Public Cloud
9 24 (3.86%) e-Learning
9 24 (3.86%) Social Media
10 18 (2.90%) Web Conferencing
11 14 (2.25%) Management Information System
11 14 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
12 13 (2.09%) Enterprise Cloud
13 12 (1.93%) NHS
14 10 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
15 9 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
15 9 (1.45%) Hackathon
16 8 (1.29%) Cyber Threat
16 8 (1.29%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.29%) Windows
2 7 (1.13%) Linux
3 3 (0.48%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.32%) Solaris
4 2 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (35.59%) AI
2 186 (29.95%) Mentoring
3 176 (28.34%) Roadmaps
4 175 (28.18%) Business Development
5 148 (23.83%) Stakeholder Management
6 143 (23.03%) Analytics
7 125 (20.13%) Decision-Making
8 115 (18.52%) Agile
9 84 (13.53%) CI/CD
10 83 (13.37%) Coaching
10 83 (13.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 79 (12.72%) Machine Learning
12 76 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
13 75 (12.08%) Risk Management
14 74 (11.92%) B2B
14 74 (11.92%) DevOps
15 70 (11.27%) Infrastructure as Code
16 63 (10.14%) Technical Leadership
17 58 (9.34%) Strategic Thinking
18 55 (8.86%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 75 (12.08%) Python
2 62 (9.98%) SQL
3 40 (6.44%) Java
4 11 (1.77%) R
5 7 (1.13%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.81%) Bash
7 3 (0.48%) Go
7 3 (0.48%) TypeScript
8 2 (0.32%) ABAP
8 2 (0.32%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.32%) Bicep
8 2 (0.32%) C#
8 2 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.32%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.32%) Scala
8 2 (0.32%) SOQL
8 2 (0.32%) SOSL
9 1 (0.16%) PHP
9 1 (0.16%) Ruby
9 1 (0.16%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 131 (21.10%) Degree
2 104 (16.75%) Security Cleared
3 74 (11.92%) SC Cleared
4 45 (7.25%) AWS Certification
5 27 (4.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 24 (3.86%) Master's Degree
7 17 (2.74%) CISSP
8 16 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
10 13 (2.09%) CISM
11 12 (1.93%) Azure Certification
11 12 (1.93%) Postgraduate
12 11 (1.77%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 9 (1.45%) DV Cleared
14 8 (1.29%) Cisco Certification
14 8 (1.29%) MBA
15 6 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 6 (0.97%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 6 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
16 5 (0.81%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (3.38%) Data Quality
2 21 (3.38%) GRC
3 20 (3.22%) GDPR
3 20 (3.22%) NIST
4 18 (2.90%) Accessibility
5 13 (2.09%) QA
5 13 (2.09%) SLA
6 11 (1.77%) PCI DSS
7 7 (1.13%) Basel III
8 6 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.97%) JSP 440
9 5 (0.81%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.64%) PMO
11 3 (0.48%) IFRS
11 3 (0.48%) NCSC
11 3 (0.48%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 22 (3.54%) Docker
2 7 (1.13%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.48%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 33 (5.31%) Kubernetes
2 10 (1.61%) Ansible
3 5 (0.81%) Puppet
4 4 (0.64%) Progress Chef
5 3 (0.48%) Argo
5 3 (0.48%) Istio
5 3 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
5 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.16%) AppManager
6 1 (0.16%) Consul
6 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (0.16%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.16%) Packer
6 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
6 1 (0.16%) Salt
Vendors
1 62 (9.98%) Microsoft
2 40 (6.44%) SAP
3 29 (4.67%) Dell
3 29 (4.67%) Salesforce
4 25 (4.03%) Google
5 24 (3.86%) Databricks
6 19 (3.06%) Oracle
7 16 (2.58%) ServiceNow
8 15 (2.42%) Foundry
9 13 (2.09%) HubSpot
9 13 (2.09%) Informatica
10 12 (1.93%) Palantir
10 12 (1.93%) Workday
11 11 (1.77%) Cisco
11 11 (1.77%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.45%) Teradata
13 8 (1.29%) Denodo
13 8 (1.29%) Fortinet
14 7 (1.13%) Aruba
14 7 (1.13%) Juniper