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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 293 270 358
Rank change year-on-year -23 +88 -97
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 573 466 733
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.64% 1.10% 0.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.19% 0.90%
Number of salaries quoted 209 144 486
10th Percentile £47,400 £45,750 £41,250
25th Percentile £61,750 £67,500 £56,938
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £85,750 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -6.71% +7.19% -5.88%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £117,925 £130,875 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £85,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year -17.65% +6.25% +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 67,035 39,288 81,690
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 74.86% 92.85% 85.64%
Number of salaries quoted 41,557 22,685 59,435
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,000 £29,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £42,500 £39,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +9.09% -10.93%
75th Percentile £77,500 £80,000 £72,500
90th Percentile £98,750 £102,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -4.76% +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 28 April 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 28 April 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 -9 505 £80,000 -5.88% 384
London +51 328 £85,000 -5.56% 222
UK excluding London -84 179 £70,000 -17.65% 257
Work from Home -24 114 £63,750 -25.00% 278
North of England -61 55 £80,000 -15.47% 98
East of England +16 45 £60,100 -42.76% 5
South East -82 41 £47,500 -32.14% 52
North West -38 37 £80,000 -15.47% 81
Yorkshire -55 16 £83,420 +11.23% 13
Scotland -26 13 £80,000 -20.00% 13
Midlands -41 13 £75,000 - 25
South West -45 9 £56,000 -32.12% 19
West Midlands -30 8 £77,500 +3.33% 14
East Midlands - 5 £50,000 - 10
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 45
North East -42 2 - - 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 12 (2.09%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.05%) IIS
5 5 (0.87%) CMS
6 4 (0.70%) Apache Spark
7 3 (0.52%) Confluence
8 2 (0.35%) WordPress
9 1 (0.17%) Apache
9 1 (0.17%) Drupal
9 1 (0.17%) nginx
9 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.87%) Adobe XD
2 5 (0.87%) InVision
2 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.87%) Sketch
3 4 (0.70%) Maya
4 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 2 (0.35%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (3.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.05%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.05%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.70%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.52%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.52%) SAP MDG-BP
5 2 (0.35%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.35%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.17%) Endur
6 1 (0.17%) Magento
6 1 (0.17%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.17%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 96 (16.75%) AWS
2 65 (11.34%) Azure
3 47 (8.20%) SaaS
4 45 (7.85%) GCP
5 41 (7.16%) Snowflake
6 12 (2.09%) AWS CloudFormation
7 10 (1.75%) Serverless
8 9 (1.57%) Cloud Computing
9 7 (1.22%) GitHub
9 7 (1.22%) Power Platform
9 7 (1.22%) SuccessFactors
10 6 (1.05%) Azure AI
10 6 (1.05%) dbt
10 6 (1.05%) Dynamics 365
10 6 (1.05%) OCI
11 5 (0.87%) Azure Machine Learning
11 5 (0.87%) Figma
11 5 (0.87%) Matillion
11 5 (0.87%) Microsoft 365
11 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.27%) Firewall
2 7 (1.22%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.22%) Network Security
2 7 (1.22%) SD-WAN
2 7 (1.22%) WAN
2 7 (1.22%) Wireless
3 6 (1.05%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.05%) WebEx
4 5 (0.87%) Broadband
4 5 (0.87%) LAN
5 4 (0.70%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.70%) WLAN
6 3 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.35%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.35%) SSL
7 2 (0.35%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.76%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (4.89%) Data Lake
3 15 (2.62%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.92%) Big Data
5 7 (1.22%) Tableau
6 6 (1.05%) Hadoop
7 5 (0.87%) Data Mining
7 5 (0.87%) Metadata
7 5 (0.87%) Power BI
8 4 (0.70%) SAP HANA
9 3 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.52%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.35%) BigQuery
10 2 (0.35%) Looker
10 2 (0.35%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.35%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.35%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.17%) PostgreSQL
11 1 (0.17%) SAP BW
11 1 (0.17%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 9 (1.57%) GitLab
2 8 (1.40%) Cucumber
3 6 (1.05%) MLflow
4 5 (0.87%) Axure RP
5 4 (0.70%) Git
5 4 (0.70%) JIRA
6 3 (0.52%) Jenkins
7 2 (0.35%) rollup.js
8 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.17%) Gatling
8 1 (0.17%) JMeter
8 1 (0.17%) Selenium
8 1 (0.17%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 197 (34.38%) Finance
2 136 (23.73%) Social Skills
3 99 (17.28%) Marketing
4 93 (16.23%) Analytical Skills
5 76 (13.26%) Public Sector
6 66 (11.52%) Presentation Skills
7 60 (10.47%) Retail
8 35 (6.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 34 (5.93%) Legal
10 31 (5.41%) Influencing Skills
11 30 (5.24%) Banking
12 24 (4.19%) Law
12 24 (4.19%) Pharmaceutical
13 20 (3.49%) Financial Institution
14 19 (3.32%) Brand Awareness
15 18 (3.14%) Aerospace
16 17 (2.97%) Games
17 11 (1.92%) Manufacturing
18 10 (1.75%) Telecoms
19 9 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 137 (23.91%) Senior
2 85 (14.83%) Architect
2 85 (14.83%) Consultant
3 66 (11.52%) Lead
4 61 (10.65%) Account Executive
5 59 (10.30%) Sales Executive
6 41 (7.16%) Senior Sales Executive
7 38 (6.63%) Business Development Executive
8 34 (5.93%) Senior Account Executive
9 33 (5.76%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (5.76%) Sales Account Executive
9 33 (5.76%) Senior Manager
10 29 (5.06%) Business Architect
11 26 (4.54%) Senior Consultant
12 25 (4.36%) Senior Architect
13 24 (4.19%) Data Management Specialist
13 24 (4.19%) Product Specialist
14 23 (4.01%) Business Consultant
15 19 (3.32%) Business Manager
15 19 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.62%) Kafka
2 14 (2.44%) Spring
2 14 (2.44%) Spring Boot
3 7 (1.22%) CSS
3 7 (1.22%) HTML
4 6 (1.05%) REST
4 6 (1.05%) SOAP
4 6 (1.05%) XML
5 5 (0.87%) OAuth
5 5 (0.87%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.87%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.87%) React
6 4 (0.70%) Flutter
6 4 (0.70%) LangChain
6 4 (0.70%) PyTorch
6 4 (0.70%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.70%) VML
7 3 (0.52%) Oracle Fusion
7 3 (0.52%) PySpark
8 2 (0.35%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 40 (6.98%) Cloud Native
1 40 (6.98%) Enterprise Software
2 31 (5.41%) Life Science
3 27 (4.71%) Blog
4 20 (3.49%) Self-Motivation
5 18 (3.14%) Product Ownership
6 16 (2.79%) AI Agents
6 16 (2.79%) Management Information System
7 15 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.62%) e-Learning
8 12 (2.09%) Legacy Applications
8 12 (2.09%) Onboarding
8 12 (2.09%) Web Conferencing
9 11 (1.92%) Podcast
9 11 (1.92%) Social Media
10 10 (1.75%) Algorithms
11 9 (1.57%) Data Fabric
11 9 (1.57%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.40%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.40%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.52%) Windows
2 2 (0.35%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) Android
3 1 (0.17%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 191 (33.33%) AI
2 170 (29.67%) Business Development
3 169 (29.49%) Decision-Making
4 129 (22.51%) Analytics
5 125 (21.82%) Mentoring
6 119 (20.77%) Roadmaps
7 111 (19.37%) Agile
8 81 (14.14%) Business Strategy
9 75 (13.09%) Problem-Solving
9 75 (13.09%) Workshop Facilitation
10 72 (12.57%) Stakeholder Management
11 64 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
12 63 (10.99%) Cybersecurity
12 63 (10.99%) Strategic Thinking
13 59 (10.30%) B2B
13 59 (10.30%) Use Case
14 57 (9.95%) Machine Learning
15 56 (9.77%) DevOps
15 56 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 54 (9.42%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 42 (7.33%) Python
2 40 (6.98%) Java
3 24 (4.19%) SQL
4 10 (1.75%) R
5 6 (1.05%) JavaScript
6 5 (0.87%) C#
6 5 (0.87%) Kotlin
6 5 (0.87%) Scala
7 4 (0.70%) Go
8 3 (0.52%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.17%) ABAP
9 1 (0.17%) Bash
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
9 1 (0.17%) Ruby
9 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 163 (28.45%) Degree
2 67 (11.69%) Security Cleared
3 42 (7.33%) SC Cleared
4 38 (6.63%) Master's Degree
5 21 (3.66%) PhD
6 20 (3.49%) CISSP
7 18 (3.14%) CISM
8 15 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 14 (2.44%) Azure Certification
10 13 (2.27%) DBS Check
11 10 (1.75%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 10 (1.75%) DV Cleared
12 9 (1.57%) Computer Science Degree
12 9 (1.57%) CRISC
12 9 (1.57%) MBA
13 8 (1.40%) BPSS Clearance
13 8 (1.40%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 7 (1.22%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 7 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
14 7 (1.22%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.71%) GRC
2 25 (4.36%) Accessibility
3 19 (3.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (3.32%) NIST
4 15 (2.62%) GxP
5 13 (2.27%) Data Quality
6 11 (1.92%) QA
7 9 (1.57%) EU AI Act
7 9 (1.57%) JSP 440
8 7 (1.22%) GDPR
8 7 (1.22%) Government Security Classifications
8 7 (1.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.05%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (1.05%) SLA
10 5 (0.87%) WCAG
11 4 (0.70%) Basel III
12 3 (0.52%) IFRS
12 3 (0.52%) NCSC
13 2 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 10 (1.75%) Docker
2 4 (0.70%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 14 (2.44%) Kubernetes
1 14 (2.44%) Terraform
2 9 (1.57%) Ansible
3 5 (0.87%) Puppet
4 3 (0.52%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.35%) Argo
5 2 (0.35%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.35%) RSA Archer
5 2 (0.35%) Salt
6 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.17%) Consul
6 1 (0.17%) Grafana
6 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.75%) Dell
2 40 (6.98%) SAP
3 39 (6.81%) Databricks
4 35 (6.11%) Microsoft
5 25 (4.36%) Informatica
6 24 (4.19%) Denodo
6 24 (4.19%) Teradata
7 22 (3.84%) Google
8 21 (3.66%) Oracle
8 21 (3.66%) Salesforce
8 21 (3.66%) ServiceNow
9 13 (2.27%) Foundry
10 12 (2.09%) HubSpot
10 12 (2.09%) Palantir
11 11 (1.92%) Cognizant
12 7 (1.22%) Adobe
12 7 (1.22%) Workday
13 6 (1.05%) Cisco
13 6 (1.05%) Juniper
13 6 (1.05%) OpenAI