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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 326 243 437
Rank change year-on-year -83 +194 -175
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 620 631 405
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.58% 1.26% 0.49%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.79% 1.42% 0.60%
Number of salaries quoted 252 162 238
10th Percentile £47,500 £45,000 £47,421
25th Percentile £61,250 £59,063 £61,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £85,000 £82,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% +3.13% -
75th Percentile £110,000 £105,938 £100,563
90th Percentile £122,500 £120,000 £140,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £76,840 £70,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +9.77% -12.50% +6.67%

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 78,793 44,552 66,983
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.35% 89.17% 80.87%
Number of salaries quoted 54,339 25,245 43,003
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,650 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -66 565 £90,000 +10.43% 225
London -50 369 £95,000 +5.56% 144
UK excluding London -100 199 £76,840 +9.77% 122
Work from Home -5 142 £71,250 -14.93% 100
North of England -22 61 £95,000 +0.38% 23
Midlands -15 39 £80,000 +30.61% 20
North West +3 35 £95,000 +0.38% 16
East of England - 31 £60,100 - 5
South East -112 29 £55,000 +30.95% 34
West Midlands -20 23 £80,000 +39.13% 15
Wales - 19 £55,000 - 4
East Midlands -8 16 £60,000 - 5
Yorkshire -27 15 £72,170 -15.09% 6
South West -60 15 £59,750 -25.31% 15
North East -51 11 £100,000 +17.65% 1
Scotland -14 4 £110,000 +37.50% 12
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 10

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 16 (2.58%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.97%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.81%) Confluence
5 3 (0.48%) ArcGIS
5 3 (0.48%) CMS
5 3 (0.48%) SAS
6 2 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.32%) Umbraco
7 1 (0.16%) Apache
7 1 (0.16%) Drupal
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
7 1 (0.16%) nginx
7 1 (0.16%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.16%) WordPress
Applications
1 7 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.16%) InVision
5 1 (0.16%) Sketch
5 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 24 (3.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.97%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.65%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.65%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.48%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.48%) Summit
5 2 (0.32%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.32%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.32%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.16%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.16%) Magento
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 177 (28.55%) AWS
2 102 (16.45%) Azure
3 63 (10.16%) SaaS
4 56 (9.03%) GCP
5 36 (5.81%) Cloud Computing
6 31 (5.00%) Snowflake
7 30 (4.84%) AWS CloudFormation
8 26 (4.19%) Serverless
9 18 (2.90%) Power Platform
10 16 (2.58%) Amazon Bedrock
11 15 (2.42%) Azure AI
12 13 (2.10%) GitHub
13 9 (1.45%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.45%) Amazon S3
13 9 (1.45%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (1.45%) PaaS
14 8 (1.29%) Amazon ECS
14 8 (1.29%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (1.29%) Microsoft 365
15 7 (1.13%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.58%) Firewall
2 10 (1.61%) Internet
3 7 (1.13%) Wireless
4 6 (0.97%) Broadband
4 6 (0.97%) Cisco ISE
4 6 (0.97%) Cisco Wireless
4 6 (0.97%) LAN
4 6 (0.97%) SD-WAN
4 6 (0.97%) WAN
4 6 (0.97%) WebEx
4 6 (0.97%) WLAN
5 5 (0.81%) Intrusion Detection
5 5 (0.81%) Network Security
6 2 (0.32%) AMQP
6 2 (0.32%) Cisco IPT
6 2 (0.32%) MQTT
6 2 (0.32%) SSL
7 1 (0.16%) GoToMeeting
7 1 (0.16%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.68%) Data Lake
3 24 (3.87%) NoSQL
4 20 (3.23%) Data Mining
4 20 (3.23%) Tableau
5 17 (2.74%) Amazon QuickSight
6 16 (2.58%) Power BI
7 7 (1.13%) Big Data
7 7 (1.13%) Metadata
8 5 (0.81%) Geospatial Data
8 5 (0.81%) SAP HANA
9 4 (0.65%) BusinessObjects
9 4 (0.65%) Delta Lake
9 4 (0.65%) Hadoop
10 3 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.32%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.32%) Power Query
11 2 (0.32%) Semantic Layer
11 2 (0.32%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 21 (3.39%) GitLab
2 20 (3.23%) Cucumber
3 8 (1.29%) MLflow
4 6 (0.97%) Git
4 6 (0.97%) Jenkins
4 6 (0.97%) Maven
5 5 (0.81%) JIRA
6 4 (0.65%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.32%) Ant
7 2 (0.32%) Apache Ivy
7 2 (0.32%) Balsamiq
7 2 (0.32%) IBM UrbanCode
7 2 (0.32%) rollup.js
8 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.16%) Axure RP
8 1 (0.16%) Gatling
8 1 (0.16%) JMeter
8 1 (0.16%) mountebank
8 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
8 1 (0.16%) Vite
General
1 241 (38.87%) Finance
2 182 (29.35%) Social Skills
3 134 (21.61%) Marketing
4 110 (17.74%) Public Sector
5 78 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
6 65 (10.48%) Retail
7 60 (9.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 58 (9.35%) Presentation Skills
9 51 (8.23%) Banking
10 45 (7.26%) Influencing Skills
11 35 (5.65%) Legal
12 24 (3.87%) Law
13 21 (3.39%) Back Office
14 20 (3.23%) Brand Awareness
15 19 (3.06%) Financial Institution
16 18 (2.90%) Telecoms
17 17 (2.74%) Public Speaking
18 15 (2.42%) Aerospace
18 15 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
19 14 (2.26%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 136 (21.94%) Senior
2 112 (18.06%) Architect
3 71 (11.45%) Consultant
4 70 (11.29%) Lead
5 46 (7.42%) Senior Manager
6 39 (6.29%) Sales Executive
7 33 (5.32%) Solutions Architect
8 30 (4.84%) Product Manager
9 27 (4.35%) Senior Architect
10 25 (4.03%) Account Executive
11 24 (3.87%) Data Management Specialist
11 24 (3.87%) Lead Architect
11 24 (3.87%) Product Specialist
12 23 (3.71%) Senior Consultant
12 23 (3.71%) Senior Product Manager
13 22 (3.55%) Business Development Executive
14 21 (3.39%) Security Architect
15 20 (3.23%) Digital Product Manager
15 20 (3.23%) Java Engineer
15 20 (3.23%) Senior Digital Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.00%) Kafka
2 21 (3.39%) Spring
2 21 (3.39%) Spring Boot
3 12 (1.94%) LangGraph
4 11 (1.77%) LangChain
5 8 (1.29%) FastAPI
6 6 (0.97%) PyTorch
6 6 (0.97%) TensorFlow
6 6 (0.97%) XML
7 5 (0.81%) CrewAI
7 5 (0.81%) Model Context Protocol
8 4 (0.65%) CSS
8 4 (0.65%) PySpark
8 4 (0.65%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (0.65%) React
8 4 (0.65%) scikit-learn
8 4 (0.65%) VML
9 3 (0.48%) HTML
9 3 (0.48%) Middleware
9 3 (0.48%) OpenMP
Miscellaneous
1 75 (12.10%) Cloud Native
2 63 (10.16%) Onboarding
3 43 (6.94%) Enterprise Software
4 42 (6.77%) Blog
5 25 (4.03%) AI Agents
6 24 (3.87%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (3.87%) e-Learning
7 23 (3.71%) Product Ownership
8 21 (3.39%) Public Cloud
9 20 (3.23%) Social Media
10 17 (2.74%) Web Conferencing
11 16 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
12 14 (2.26%) Management Information System
13 13 (2.10%) NHS
14 10 (1.61%) Enterprise Cloud
14 10 (1.61%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.61%) Legacy Applications
15 9 (1.45%) Hackathon
16 8 (1.29%) Data Fabric
16 8 (1.29%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.29%) Linux
2 7 (1.13%) Windows
3 3 (0.48%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.32%) Solaris
4 2 (0.32%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (36.77%) AI
2 181 (29.19%) Mentoring
3 172 (27.74%) Business Development
4 168 (27.10%) Roadmaps
5 157 (25.32%) Analytics
5 157 (25.32%) Decision-Making
6 108 (17.42%) Agile
7 104 (16.77%) Stakeholder Management
8 82 (13.23%) Continuous Improvement
9 81 (13.06%) Machine Learning
10 74 (11.94%) DevOps
10 74 (11.94%) Problem-Solving
11 73 (11.77%) CI/CD
12 70 (11.29%) B2B
13 68 (10.97%) Coaching
14 65 (10.48%) Risk Management
15 62 (10.00%) Strategic Thinking
16 61 (9.84%) Business Intelligence
16 61 (9.84%) Infrastructure as Code
17 58 (9.35%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 77 (12.42%) Python
2 56 (9.03%) SQL
3 41 (6.61%) Java
4 11 (1.77%) R
5 6 (0.97%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.81%) Bash
7 4 (0.65%) Go
8 3 (0.48%) C#
8 3 (0.48%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.32%) ABAP
9 2 (0.32%) Bicep
9 2 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.32%) Scala
10 1 (0.16%) PHP
10 1 (0.16%) Ruby
10 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 157 (25.32%) Degree
2 98 (15.81%) Security Cleared
3 67 (10.81%) SC Cleared
4 41 (6.61%) AWS Certification
5 25 (4.03%) Master's Degree
6 23 (3.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 20 (3.23%) CISSP
8 18 (2.90%) Azure Certification
8 18 (2.90%) CISM
8 18 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (2.26%) DV Cleared
11 12 (1.94%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 11 (1.77%) CRISC
13 10 (1.61%) MBA
14 9 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
15 8 (1.29%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 8 (1.29%) DBS Check
16 7 (1.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 6 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (4.35%) GRC
3 23 (3.71%) NIST
4 22 (3.55%) GDPR
5 19 (3.06%) Accessibility
6 18 (2.90%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.94%) QA
7 12 (1.94%) SLA
8 11 (1.77%) JSP 440
9 10 (1.61%) PCI DSS
10 9 (1.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 8 (1.29%) EU AI Act
12 7 (1.13%) Basel III
13 5 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
13 5 (0.81%) Government Security Classifications
14 4 (0.65%) IFRS
14 4 (0.65%) PMO
15 3 (0.48%) NCSC
15 3 (0.48%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.48%) WCAG
System Software
1 23 (3.71%) Docker
2 6 (0.97%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.48%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 28 (4.52%) Kubernetes
2 20 (3.23%) Terraform
3 13 (2.10%) Ansible
4 7 (1.13%) Puppet
5 5 (0.81%) Progress Chef
6 4 (0.65%) Argo
7 2 (0.32%) Salt
8 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.16%) Consul
8 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
8 1 (0.16%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 65 (10.48%) Dell
2 60 (9.68%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.29%) Databricks
4 32 (5.16%) SAP
5 27 (4.35%) Informatica
6 26 (4.19%) Google
7 25 (4.03%) Teradata
8 24 (3.87%) Denodo
9 23 (3.71%) Salesforce
10 19 (3.06%) Foundry
10 19 (3.06%) ServiceNow
11 16 (2.58%) Palantir
12 9 (1.45%) Cisco
12 9 (1.45%) OpenAI
13 8 (1.29%) HubSpot
13 8 (1.29%) Oracle
14 6 (0.97%) Aruba
14 6 (0.97%) Cognizant
14 6 (0.97%) Fortinet
14 6 (0.97%) Juniper