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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 302 257 429
Rank change year-on-year -45 +172 -168
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 615 580 561
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.18% 0.55%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.84% 1.31% 0.68%
Number of salaries quoted 241 161 363
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £56,250 £50,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £82,500 £73,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.03% +13.01% -11.52%
75th Percentile £102,500 £103,750 £97,500
90th Percentile £117,500 £120,000 £129,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £73,750 £66,250 £70,000
% change year-on-year +11.32% -5.36% -

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 72,817 44,332 83,106
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.70% 90.20% 82.17%
Number of salaries quoted 50,259 24,803 58,175
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,750 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -34 562 £80,000 +1.59% 549
London -11 365 £86,500 -2.54% 332
UK excluding London -88 185 £73,750 +11.32% 287
Work from Home -16 133 £67,500 -18.18% 380
North of England -15 67 £95,000 +5.77% 64
East of England - 47 £60,100 - 28
North West 0 42 £95,000 +0.38% 41
Midlands -17 34 £80,000 +56.10% 35
South East -113 22 £37,500 -23.47% 78
Yorkshire -26 18 £76,840 +2.45% 18
West Midlands -30 18 £80,000 +56.10% 19
East Midlands -9 16 £50,000 - 16
South West -61 9 £59,750 -25.31% 24
North East -53 7 £100,000 +71.67% 5
Scotland +4 3 £110,000 +15.79% 54
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 4

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 (2.28%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.14%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.81%) CMS
5 4 (0.65%) Confluence
6 3 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.49%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.33%) WordPress
8 1 (0.16%) Apache
8 1 (0.16%) Drupal
8 1 (0.16%) IIS
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (1.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (0.16%) Adobe XD
4 1 (0.16%) InVision
4 1 (0.16%) Siemens NX
4 1 (0.16%) Sketch
4 1 (0.16%) Trello
Business Applications
1 25 (4.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.81%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.65%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.49%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.49%) SAP MDG-BP
5 3 (0.49%) Summit
6 2 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
6 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.16%) Magento
7 1 (0.16%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.16%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-M
7 1 (0.16%) SAP MDG-S
7 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 154 (25.04%) AWS
2 87 (14.15%) Azure
3 64 (10.41%) SaaS
4 50 (8.13%) GCP
5 35 (5.69%) Cloud Computing
6 28 (4.55%) AWS CloudFormation
6 28 (4.55%) Snowflake
7 21 (3.41%) Serverless
8 14 (2.28%) Power Platform
9 13 (2.11%) Amazon Bedrock
10 12 (1.95%) GitHub
11 10 (1.63%) PaaS
12 9 (1.46%) Azure AI
13 8 (1.30%) SuccessFactors
14 7 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon Kinesis
15 6 (0.98%) Amazon S3
15 6 (0.98%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.25%) Firewall
2 10 (1.63%) Internet
3 7 (1.14%) Intrusion Detection
3 7 (1.14%) Network Security
4 6 (0.98%) Wireless
5 5 (0.81%) Broadband
5 5 (0.81%) Cisco ISE
5 5 (0.81%) SD-WAN
5 5 (0.81%) WAN
5 5 (0.81%) WebEx
6 4 (0.65%) Cisco Wireless
6 4 (0.65%) LAN
6 4 (0.65%) WLAN
7 2 (0.33%) AMQP
7 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.33%) MQTT
7 2 (0.33%) SSL
7 2 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.16%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.16%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.72%) Data Lake
3 23 (3.74%) NoSQL
4 12 (1.95%) Power BI
5 9 (1.46%) Big Data
6 6 (0.98%) SAP HANA
7 5 (0.81%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.81%) Metadata
8 4 (0.65%) BusinessObjects
8 4 (0.65%) Data Mining
8 4 (0.65%) Delta Lake
9 3 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
9 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.33%) SAP BW
10 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
10 2 (0.33%) Tableau
11 1 (0.16%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 20 (3.25%) Cucumber
1 20 (3.25%) GitLab
2 6 (0.98%) MLflow
3 4 (0.65%) Claude Code
3 4 (0.65%) JIRA
3 4 (0.65%) Maven
4 3 (0.49%) Git
4 3 (0.49%) Jenkins
5 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
6 1 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.16%) Axure RP
6 1 (0.16%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.16%) Gatling
6 1 (0.16%) JMeter
6 1 (0.16%) mountebank
6 1 (0.16%) Selenium
6 1 (0.16%) Vagrant
General
1 209 (33.98%) Finance
2 164 (26.67%) Social Skills
3 112 (18.21%) Marketing
4 101 (16.42%) Public Sector
5 97 (15.77%) Analytical Skills
6 62 (10.08%) Presentation Skills
7 60 (9.76%) Retail
8 45 (7.32%) Banking
9 43 (6.99%) Legal
10 36 (5.85%) Influencing Skills
11 35 (5.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 20 (3.25%) Brand Awareness
12 20 (3.25%) Financial Institution
13 14 (2.28%) Manufacturing
13 14 (2.28%) Telecoms
14 13 (2.11%) Law
14 13 (2.11%) Organisational Skills
14 13 (2.11%) Public Speaking
15 12 (1.95%) Aerospace
16 10 (1.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 151 (24.55%) Senior
2 105 (17.07%) Architect
3 78 (12.68%) Consultant
4 73 (11.87%) Lead
5 59 (9.59%) Sales Executive
6 57 (9.27%) Account Executive
7 45 (7.32%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.50%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.34%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.53%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.37%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.37%) Sales Account Executive
11 33 (5.37%) Solutions Architect
12 30 (4.88%) Senior Architect
13 24 (3.90%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (3.90%) Product Specialist
14 23 (3.74%) Product Manager
14 23 (3.74%) Senior Consultant
15 22 (3.58%) Java Engineer
15 22 (3.58%) Lead Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.04%) Kafka
2 24 (3.90%) Spring
2 24 (3.90%) Spring Boot
3 9 (1.46%) LangGraph
4 7 (1.14%) LangChain
5 6 (0.98%) REST
5 6 (0.98%) SOAP
5 6 (0.98%) XML
6 5 (0.81%) Model Context Protocol
6 5 (0.81%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.81%) TensorFlow
7 4 (0.65%) CrewAI
7 4 (0.65%) FastAPI
7 4 (0.65%) PySpark
7 4 (0.65%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (0.65%) VML
8 3 (0.49%) Middleware
8 3 (0.49%) OAuth
8 3 (0.49%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.49%) React
Miscellaneous
1 63 (10.24%) Cloud Native
2 50 (8.13%) Onboarding
3 47 (7.64%) Enterprise Software
4 35 (5.69%) Blog
5 26 (4.23%) e-Learning
6 24 (3.90%) Distributed Systems
7 21 (3.41%) AI Agents
7 21 (3.41%) Public Cloud
8 18 (2.93%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.93%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (2.76%) Product Ownership
10 14 (2.28%) NHS
10 14 (2.28%) Social Media
10 14 (2.28%) Web Conferencing
11 12 (1.95%) Legacy Applications
12 11 (1.79%) Data Fabric
12 11 (1.79%) Greenfield Project
12 11 (1.79%) Life Science
13 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Cloud
13 10 (1.63%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.81%) Linux
1 5 (0.81%) Windows
2 1 (0.16%) Unix
2 1 (0.16%) VMS
2 1 (0.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (33.17%) AI
2 184 (29.92%) Business Development
3 169 (27.48%) Mentoring
4 161 (26.18%) Decision-Making
5 147 (23.90%) Roadmaps
6 143 (23.25%) Analytics
7 99 (16.10%) Agile
8 80 (13.01%) Stakeholder Management
9 75 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
10 74 (12.03%) B2B
11 72 (11.71%) DevOps
12 70 (11.38%) Business Strategy
13 69 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 66 (10.73%) CI/CD
15 64 (10.41%) Cybersecurity
15 64 (10.41%) Strategic Thinking
16 62 (10.08%) Machine Learning
17 58 (9.43%) Coaching
17 58 (9.43%) Workshop Facilitation
18 56 (9.11%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 46 (7.48%) Python
2 44 (7.15%) Java
3 33 (5.37%) SQL
4 9 (1.46%) R
5 4 (0.65%) Bash
5 4 (0.65%) Go
5 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.49%) C#
6 3 (0.49%) Kotlin
7 2 (0.33%) ABAP
7 2 (0.33%) Bicep
8 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.16%) PHP
8 1 (0.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 167 (27.15%) Degree
2 78 (12.68%) Security Cleared
3 46 (7.48%) SC Cleared
4 36 (5.85%) AWS Certification
5 24 (3.90%) CISSP
6 23 (3.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 23 (3.74%) CISM
7 21 (3.41%) Master's Degree
8 18 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (2.44%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.28%) DV Cleared
11 13 (2.11%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 12 (1.95%) CRISC
13 11 (1.79%) DBS Check
14 9 (1.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 9 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
14 9 (1.46%) MBA
15 8 (1.30%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 7 (1.14%) GSEC
17 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (5.69%) GRC
2 30 (4.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.58%) NIST
4 18 (2.93%) GDPR
5 14 (2.28%) JSP 440
6 13 (2.11%) Data Quality
7 12 (1.95%) Accessibility
8 11 (1.79%) PCI DSS
9 10 (1.63%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 10 (1.63%) QA
9 10 (1.63%) SLA
10 9 (1.46%) EU AI Act
11 8 (1.30%) Basel III
12 7 (1.14%) Government Security Classifications
13 5 (0.81%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.65%) PMO
15 3 (0.49%) IFRS
16 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 2 (0.33%) GAAP
16 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 17 (2.76%) Docker
2 6 (0.98%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 21 (3.41%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.60%) Terraform
3 11 (1.79%) Ansible
4 5 (0.81%) Puppet
5 4 (0.65%) Argo
6 3 (0.49%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.33%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 2 (0.33%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.33%) Salt
8 1 (0.16%) Amdocs OSS
8 1 (0.16%) Consul
8 1 (0.16%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.16%) Grafana
8 1 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (15.61%) Dell
2 57 (9.27%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.34%) SAP
4 33 (5.37%) Databricks
5 25 (4.07%) Informatica
5 25 (4.07%) Salesforce
5 25 (4.07%) Teradata
6 24 (3.90%) Denodo
7 21 (3.41%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.09%) Google
9 15 (2.44%) Foundry
10 14 (2.28%) Palantir
11 13 (2.11%) HubSpot
12 7 (1.14%) Cisco
12 7 (1.14%) Oracle
13 6 (0.98%) Cognizant
13 6 (0.98%) OpenAI
13 6 (0.98%) Workday
14 5 (0.81%) Ariba
14 5 (0.81%) Juniper