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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 296 303 338
Rank change year-on-year +7 +35 -76
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 528 412 748
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.67% 1.00% 0.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 1.07% 0.97%
Number of salaries quoted 187 131 492
10th Percentile £41,500 £47,500 £42,550
25th Percentile £61,250 £71,298 £61,125
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% +9.38% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £88,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year -20.90% +10.63% +3.23%

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 60,236 38,342 77,370
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 76.83% 93.07% 86.53%
Number of salaries quoted 37,103 22,499 57,686
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -10.57%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.26%

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 30 March 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 30 March 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 0 461 £80,000 -8.57% 403
London +59 301 £86,500 -3.89% 243
UK excluding London -67 166 £70,000 -20.90% 286
Work from Home -7 100 £80,000 -9.59% 124
East of England +13 47 £65,050 -33.11% 9
North of England -59 46 £80,000 -15.47% 54
South East -69 38 £62,500 -10.71% 157
North West -30 37 £77,500 -18.11% 26
Scotland -37 14 £80,000 -20.00% 11
Midlands -31 10 £75,000 - 30
South West -36 9 £44,250 -50.83% 22
West Midlands -17 7 £77,500 +3.33% 25
Yorkshire -52 7 £90,000 +20.00% 21
East Midlands - 3 £50,000 - 5
North East -19 2 - - 8
Wales - 2 £42,000 - 3

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 8 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
2 7 (1.33%) Palantir Foundry
3 6 (1.14%) IIS
4 5 (0.95%) WordPress
5 4 (0.76%) CMS
6 3 (0.57%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.57%) Confluence
7 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.19%) Apache
8 1 (0.19%) Drupal
8 1 (0.19%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (2.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.95%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.95%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.95%) InVision
3 5 (0.95%) Maya
3 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.95%) Sketch
4 3 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.57%) Elementor
4 3 (0.57%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.19%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 16 (3.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.76%) Endur
3 4 (0.76%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.57%) Elite 3E
5 2 (0.38%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.19%) Magento
6 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.19%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.19%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-F
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.19%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 82 (15.53%) AWS
2 59 (11.17%) Azure
3 47 (8.90%) SaaS
4 45 (8.52%) Snowflake
5 38 (7.20%) GCP
6 10 (1.89%) GitHub
7 9 (1.70%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (1.70%) Power Platform
8 8 (1.52%) Cloud Computing
8 8 (1.52%) Dynamics 365
9 7 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (1.14%) dbt
10 6 (1.14%) OCI
10 6 (1.14%) Serverless
10 6 (1.14%) SuccessFactors
11 5 (0.95%) Figma
11 5 (0.95%) Google Ads
11 5 (0.95%) Matillion
12 4 (0.76%) Alation
12 4 (0.76%) Cloud Composer
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.27%) Firewall
2 7 (1.33%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.33%) Network Security
3 4 (0.76%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.76%) WAN
3 4 (0.76%) Wireless
4 3 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.57%) WebEx
4 3 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.38%) Broadband
5 2 (0.38%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.38%) LAN
5 2 (0.38%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.19%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.19%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.19%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.19%) SSL
6 1 (0.19%) WLAN
6 1 (0.19%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (7.39%) Data Warehouse
2 31 (5.87%) Data Lake
3 12 (2.27%) NoSQL
4 11 (2.08%) Tableau
5 10 (1.89%) Metadata
6 8 (1.52%) Big Data
6 8 (1.52%) Power BI
7 6 (1.14%) BigQuery
7 6 (1.14%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.95%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.76%) DataStage
9 4 (0.76%) QlikView
9 4 (0.76%) SAP HANA
10 3 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.38%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.38%) Looker
11 2 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (0.38%) Semantic Layer
11 2 (0.38%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 6 (1.14%) GitLab
2 5 (0.95%) Axure RP
2 5 (0.95%) Cucumber
2 5 (0.95%) MLflow
3 4 (0.76%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.76%) ERwin
3 4 (0.76%) JIRA
3 4 (0.76%) PowerDesigner
4 2 (0.38%) Git
4 2 (0.38%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.19%) Gatling
5 1 (0.19%) JMeter
5 1 (0.19%) Selenium
5 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.19%) Vagrant
General
1 184 (34.85%) Finance
2 121 (22.92%) Social Skills
3 87 (16.48%) Analytical Skills
4 84 (15.91%) Marketing
5 63 (11.93%) Presentation Skills
5 63 (11.93%) Public Sector
6 45 (8.52%) Retail
7 38 (7.20%) Legal
8 35 (6.63%) Law
9 31 (5.87%) Banking
10 28 (5.30%) Influencing Skills
11 26 (4.92%) Pharmaceutical
12 24 (4.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 23 (4.36%) Games
14 20 (3.79%) Financial Institution
15 15 (2.84%) Aerospace
16 10 (1.89%) Publishing
17 9 (1.70%) Telecoms
18 8 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
19 7 (1.33%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 120 (22.73%) Senior
2 76 (14.39%) Architect
3 72 (13.64%) Consultant
4 70 (13.26%) Lead
5 62 (11.74%) Sales Executive
6 59 (11.17%) Account Executive
7 44 (8.33%) Senior Sales Executive
8 38 (7.20%) Business Development Executive
9 33 (6.25%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (6.25%) Sales Account Executive
9 33 (6.25%) Senior Account Executive
10 26 (4.92%) Business Architect
10 26 (4.92%) Product Specialist
11 24 (4.55%) Data Management Specialist
11 24 (4.55%) Senior Manager
12 22 (4.17%) Senior Architect
13 21 (3.98%) Business Consultant
14 20 (3.79%) Senior Consultant
14 20 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (3.41%) Business Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.08%) Spring
1 11 (2.08%) Spring Boot
2 10 (1.89%) Kafka
3 7 (1.33%) CSS
3 7 (1.33%) HTML
4 6 (1.14%) REST
4 6 (1.14%) SOAP
5 5 (0.95%) OAuth
5 5 (0.95%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.95%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.95%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.95%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.76%) React
7 3 (0.57%) Flutter
7 3 (0.57%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.57%) XML
8 2 (0.38%) PySpark
8 2 (0.38%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.38%) SAP Fiori
8 2 (0.38%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.25%) Life Science
2 30 (5.68%) Blog
3 27 (5.11%) Cloud Native
3 27 (5.11%) Self-Motivation
4 24 (4.55%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (3.03%) Management Information System
6 15 (2.84%) Algorithms
6 15 (2.84%) Social Media
7 13 (2.46%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.46%) Onboarding
7 13 (2.46%) Web Conferencing
8 12 (2.27%) e-Learning
9 11 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
10 10 (1.89%) Podcast
11 8 (1.52%) Data Fabric
11 8 (1.52%) Security Posture
11 8 (1.52%) Virtual Team
12 7 (1.33%) NHS
12 7 (1.33%) Product Ownership
13 6 (1.14%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.57%) Windows
2 2 (0.38%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Android
3 1 (0.19%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.19%) VMS
3 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (35.61%) AI
2 164 (31.06%) Decision-Making
3 155 (29.36%) Business Development
4 138 (26.14%) Analytics
5 108 (20.45%) Roadmaps
6 99 (18.75%) Agile
7 98 (18.56%) Mentoring
8 79 (14.96%) Business Strategy
9 69 (13.07%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (12.69%) Workshop Facilitation
11 64 (12.12%) Data Science
12 63 (11.93%) Cybersecurity
13 62 (11.74%) Stakeholder Management
13 62 (11.74%) Use Case
14 61 (11.55%) Strategic Thinking
15 60 (11.36%) B2B
15 60 (11.36%) Generative AI
16 54 (10.23%) Machine Learning
16 54 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 51 (9.66%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 37 (7.01%) Python
2 31 (5.87%) Java
3 22 (4.17%) SQL
4 6 (1.14%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.14%) R
5 5 (0.95%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.95%) Scala
6 4 (0.76%) C#
7 3 (0.57%) Go
7 3 (0.57%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.19%) ABAP
8 1 (0.19%) Bash
8 1 (0.19%) PHP
8 1 (0.19%) Ruby
8 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 168 (31.82%) Degree
2 62 (11.74%) Security Cleared
3 50 (9.47%) Master's Degree
4 40 (7.58%) SC Cleared
5 30 (5.68%) PhD
6 19 (3.60%) CISSP
7 18 (3.41%) CISM
7 18 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (2.84%) Azure Certification
9 14 (2.65%) DBS Check
10 12 (2.27%) AWS Certification
11 10 (1.89%) CRISC
11 10 (1.89%) DV Cleared
12 9 (1.70%) MBA
13 7 (1.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.33%) GSEC
14 6 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 6 (1.14%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 6 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 6 (1.14%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (4.55%) Accessibility
2 20 (3.79%) GRC
3 19 (3.60%) GxP
3 19 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (3.22%) NIST
5 14 (2.65%) Data Quality
6 11 (2.08%) QA
7 9 (1.70%) EU AI Act
7 9 (1.70%) JSP 440
8 8 (1.52%) GDPR
9 7 (1.33%) Government Security Classifications
9 7 (1.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 6 (1.14%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.95%) WCAG
12 4 (0.76%) EMIR
13 3 (0.57%) NCSC
13 3 (0.57%) PCI DSS
13 3 (0.57%) SLA
14 2 (0.38%) IFRS
14 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 7 (1.33%) Docker
2 4 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (3.03%) Terraform
2 8 (1.52%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.33%) Ansible
4 4 (0.76%) Puppet
5 2 (0.38%) Argo
5 2 (0.38%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.38%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.38%) RSA Archer
5 2 (0.38%) Salt
6 1 (0.19%) Consul
6 1 (0.19%) Grafana
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (18.18%) Dell
2 40 (7.58%) Databricks
3 32 (6.06%) SAP
4 30 (5.68%) Microsoft
5 29 (5.49%) Informatica
6 28 (5.30%) Google
7 24 (4.55%) Denodo
7 24 (4.55%) Teradata
8 19 (3.60%) Oracle
9 13 (2.46%) HubSpot
9 13 (2.46%) ServiceNow
10 11 (2.08%) Salesforce
11 10 (1.89%) Adobe
12 9 (1.70%) IBM
13 7 (1.33%) Foundry
13 7 (1.33%) Palantir
14 6 (1.14%) Cognizant
14 6 (1.14%) Workday
15 5 (0.95%) BT
16 4 (0.76%) OpenLink