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 5 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 286 439 255
Rank change year-on-year +153 -184 -33
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 452 338 654
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.53% 1.31%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.97% 0.62% 1.39%
Number of salaries quoted 141 156 382
10th Percentile £40,000 £54,375 £65,000
25th Percentile £58,750 £66,250 £75,208
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £84,180 £82,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.97% +2.04% -2.94%
75th Percentile £112,500 £100,000 £97,290
90th Percentile £125,000 £110,000 £117,474
UK excluding London median annual salary £62,500 £80,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.88% +0.46% +9.84%

All Process and 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 46,704 54,735 46,950
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 83.99% 86.52% 93.73%
Number of salaries quoted 28,159 28,437 36,165
10th Percentile £28,250 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £99,000 £99,700
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.64% +4.76% -1.15%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025. 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 +184 413 £80,000 - 916
London +172 317 £100,000 +18.57% 197
UK excluding London +26 101 £62,500 -21.88% 864
Work from Home +53 74 £65,000 -22.78% 649
South East +43 37 £35,000 -51.72% 279
North of England +37 17 £70,000 -19.08% 187
North West +44 16 £62,500 -30.99% 81
Scotland -10 14 £68,500 -31.50% 49
Midlands +38 11 £100,000 +53.85% 132
South West +19 10 £61,920 -22.60% 95
East of England +11 9 £45,500 -49.30% 105
West Midlands +24 8 £71,250 +9.62% 73
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 11
East Midlands +7 1 £100,000 +50.94% 53
Yorkshire -8 1 £105,000 +68.00% 71
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 22

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 13 (2.88%) Apache Spark
2 5 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.11%) CMS
2 5 (1.11%) WordPress
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.44%) nginx
4 2 (0.44%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.22%) CICS
5 1 (0.22%) Confluence
5 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.22%) WebSphere
Applications
1 15 (3.32%) Maya
2 12 (2.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (2.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.55%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (1.11%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.88%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.88%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.66%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.66%) Elementor
8 2 (0.44%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.44%) Adobe Premiere
8 2 (0.44%) Adobe XD
8 2 (0.44%) InVision
8 2 (0.44%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 34 (7.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 8 (1.77%) Endur
4 7 (1.55%) SAP SCM
5 4 (0.88%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (0.88%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.66%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.66%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.66%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.66%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.66%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.66%) SAP IBP
6 3 (0.66%) SAP PP
7 2 (0.44%) SAP APO
7 2 (0.44%) SAP FSCM
7 2 (0.44%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.44%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.44%) Shopify
8 1 (0.22%) SAP LE
8 1 (0.22%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 91 (20.13%) AWS
2 76 (16.81%) Azure
3 33 (7.30%) SaaS
4 31 (6.86%) GCP
5 25 (5.53%) Amazon Bedrock
5 25 (5.53%) Vertex AI
6 20 (4.42%) Power Platform
7 16 (3.54%) GitHub
8 15 (3.32%) Cloud Computing
9 14 (3.10%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (3.10%) Snowflake
10 13 (2.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (2.43%) OCI
12 10 (2.21%) Serverless
13 9 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
14 6 (1.33%) Azure Machine Learning
15 5 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
15 5 (1.11%) Google Ads
15 5 (1.11%) Google Gemini
15 5 (1.11%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (0.66%) DNS
2 2 (0.44%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 2 (0.44%) Network Security
3 1 (0.22%) BGP
3 1 (0.22%) Firewall
3 1 (0.22%) LAN
3 1 (0.22%) MPLS
3 1 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.22%) SSH
3 1 (0.22%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.22%) WAN
3 1 (0.22%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (6.86%) Data Warehouse
1 31 (6.86%) NoSQL
2 20 (4.42%) Metadata
3 19 (4.20%) Power BI
4 16 (3.54%) Big Data
5 14 (3.10%) Hadoop
6 13 (2.88%) Amazon Redshift
7 7 (1.55%) Tableau
8 6 (1.33%) BigQuery
9 5 (1.11%) MongoDB
10 4 (0.88%) Data Lake
10 4 (0.88%) DataStage
10 4 (0.88%) QlikView
11 3 (0.66%) DynamoDB
11 3 (0.66%) Looker
11 3 (0.66%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.66%) SAP HANA
11 3 (0.66%) SQL Server
12 2 (0.44%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.44%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 15 (3.32%) ERwin
2 10 (2.21%) JIRA
3 4 (0.88%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.88%) GitLab
3 4 (0.88%) MLflow
3 4 (0.88%) PowerDesigner
4 3 (0.66%) eCATT
5 2 (0.44%) Axure RP
5 2 (0.44%) Git
5 2 (0.44%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.22%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.22%) Vite
6 1 (0.22%) WaveMaker
General
1 163 (36.06%) Finance
2 141 (31.19%) Social Skills
3 135 (29.87%) Analytical Skills
4 111 (24.56%) Law
5 96 (21.24%) Marketing
6 56 (12.39%) Games
7 45 (9.96%) Presentation Skills
8 43 (9.51%) Retail
9 41 (9.07%) Banking
10 32 (7.08%) Public Sector
11 25 (5.53%) Legal
12 24 (5.31%) Pharmaceutical
13 20 (4.42%) Influencing Skills
14 19 (4.20%) Advertising
15 13 (2.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (2.88%) Manufacturing
16 10 (2.21%) Dutch Language
16 10 (2.21%) French Language
17 9 (1.99%) Billing
17 9 (1.99%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 91 (20.13%) Lead
2 80 (17.70%) Senior
3 74 (16.37%) Architect
4 67 (14.82%) Consultant
5 42 (9.29%) Senior Consultant
6 31 (6.86%) Solutions Architect
7 28 (6.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 25 (5.53%) Gen AI Consultant
9 23 (5.09%) Lead Architect
10 22 (4.87%) Account Executive
11 19 (4.20%) IT Manager
12 17 (3.76%) Data Architect
13 16 (3.54%) Marketing Manager
13 16 (3.54%) Product Lead
14 14 (3.10%) Data Scientist
14 14 (3.10%) Senior Manager
15 13 (2.88%) SAP Consultant
16 11 (2.43%) Lead Data Architect
16 11 (2.43%) Sales Executive
17 10 (2.21%) IT Services Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (5.97%) LangChain
2 17 (3.76%) React
3 15 (3.32%) REST
4 13 (2.88%) Kafka
5 10 (2.21%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.77%) .NET
7 7 (1.55%) Vue
8 5 (1.11%) ASP.NET
8 5 (1.11%) JSON
8 5 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (1.11%) XML
9 4 (0.88%) SAP Fiori
10 3 (0.66%) .NET Framework
10 3 (0.66%) CSS
10 3 (0.66%) HTML
10 3 (0.66%) Hugging Face
10 3 (0.66%) Middleware
10 3 (0.66%) SAPUI5
11 2 (0.44%) Spring
11 2 (0.44%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 49 (10.84%) Algorithms
2 38 (8.41%) Legacy Systems
3 33 (7.30%) Product Ownership
3 33 (7.30%) Self-Motivation
4 28 (6.19%) Enterprise Software
5 26 (5.75%) Virtual Team
6 24 (5.31%) Life Science
7 19 (4.20%) FMCG
8 18 (3.98%) Social Media
9 17 (3.76%) Blog
9 17 (3.76%) Management Information System
10 15 (3.32%) Onboarding
11 12 (2.65%) Cloud Native
11 12 (2.65%) Data Structures
12 11 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
13 10 (2.21%) Blockchain
14 8 (1.77%) Credit Risk
14 8 (1.77%) Web Conferencing
15 7 (1.55%) Low-Code
16 6 (1.33%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.22%) Android
1 1 (0.22%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.22%) Linux
1 1 (0.22%) Solaris
1 1 (0.22%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 190 (42.04%) AI
2 159 (35.18%) Analytics
3 142 (31.42%) Roadmaps
4 124 (27.43%) Agile
5 98 (21.68%) Business Strategy
6 95 (21.02%) Machine Learning
7 89 (19.69%) Business Development
8 88 (19.47%) Computer Science
9 87 (19.25%) Decision-Making
10 81 (17.92%) Problem-Solving
11 77 (17.04%) Stakeholder Management
12 76 (16.81%) Generative AI
13 73 (16.15%) IT Strategy
14 69 (15.27%) Mentoring
15 66 (14.60%) Project Management
16 64 (14.16%) DevOps
17 54 (11.95%) Enterprise Architecture
18 52 (11.50%) Data Science
19 51 (11.28%) B2B
20 48 (10.62%) Data Strategy
Programming Languages
1 57 (12.61%) Python
2 31 (6.86%) SQL
3 19 (4.20%) JavaScript
4 7 (1.55%) C#
5 5 (1.11%) Java
6 3 (0.66%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.44%) Bash
7 2 (0.44%) C++
7 2 (0.44%) TypeScript
8 1 (0.22%) ABAP
8 1 (0.22%) Bicep
8 1 (0.22%) Bourne shell
8 1 (0.22%) C-shell
8 1 (0.22%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.22%) Perl
8 1 (0.22%) Ruby
8 1 (0.22%) Scala
8 1 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 177 (39.16%) Degree
2 75 (16.59%) Master's Degree
3 57 (12.61%) PhD
4 52 (11.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (4.42%) Security Cleared
6 15 (3.32%) SC Cleared
7 10 (2.21%) PMI Certification
7 10 (2.21%) PMP
7 10 (2.21%) TOGAF Certification
8 9 (1.99%) Azure Certification
9 8 (1.77%) CISSP
9 8 (1.77%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.33%) CISM
10 6 (1.33%) SAP Certification
11 5 (1.11%) AWS Certification
11 5 (1.11%) MBA
12 4 (0.88%) CISA
12 4 (0.88%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.66%) BPSS Clearance
13 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (4.65%) Data Quality
1 21 (4.65%) QA
2 20 (4.42%) GxP
3 18 (3.98%) GDPR
4 12 (2.65%) Accessibility
5 10 (2.21%) PMO
6 8 (1.77%) EMIR
6 8 (1.77%) SLA
7 5 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.88%) NIST
9 3 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.66%) WCAG
10 2 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.44%) NCSC
10 2 (0.44%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.44%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.22%) GMP
System Software
1 7 (1.55%) Docker
2 1 (0.22%) RACF
2 1 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 23 (5.09%) Terraform
2 10 (2.21%) Kubernetes
3 4 (0.88%) Ansible
4 2 (0.44%) Grafana
5 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle ZFS
5 1 (0.22%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 48 (10.62%) Google
2 39 (8.63%) SAP
3 35 (7.74%) Microsoft
4 25 (5.53%) Databricks
5 21 (4.65%) Oracle
6 16 (3.54%) Adobe
7 15 (3.32%) Dell
8 8 (1.77%) OpenLink
8 8 (1.77%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.55%) OpenAI
10 6 (1.33%) Cognizant
11 5 (1.11%) HubSpot
11 5 (1.11%) IBM
11 5 (1.11%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.11%) TikTok
12 4 (0.88%) Facebook
12 4 (0.88%) Foundry
12 4 (0.88%) Informatica
13 3 (0.66%) Atlassian
13 3 (0.66%) Temenos