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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 299 280 378
Rank change year-on-year -19 +98 -116
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 593 478 671
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.64% 1.12% 0.68%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.86% 1.21% 0.81%
Number of salaries quoted 236 131 428
10th Percentile £43,750 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £62,188 £62,500 £52,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £85,000 £78,000
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +8.97% -8.24%
75th Percentile £97,500 £101,875 £100,064
90th Percentile £112,625 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £80,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year -12.50% - +14.29%

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 68,715 39,643 83,325
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.91% 93.27% 84.01%
Number of salaries quoted 44,731 20,766 60,219
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,250
25th Percentile £40,839 £41,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,375 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +2.78% +6.14% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £102,410 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +1.94% +3.00% -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 27 May 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 27 May 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 -15 532 £80,000 -3.90% 474
London +26 331 £81,250 -7.14% 330
UK excluding London -47 200 £70,000 -12.50% 170
Work from Home +27 129 £70,000 -17.65% 198
North of England -13 67 £85,000 -5.36% 53
East of England - 46 £60,100 - 6
North West -9 43 £87,500 -7.54% 36
South East -71 37 £37,500 -42.31% 45
Midlands -26 24 £80,000 +77.78% 21
Yorkshire -33 18 £83,420 +4.28% 11
West Midlands -42 13 £80,000 +77.78% 11
South West -50 12 £56,000 -32.12% 17
Scotland -7 11 £80,000 -15.79% 17
East Midlands - 11 £50,000 - 10
North East -35 6 £71,250 +22.32% 6
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 (2.36%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.01%) IIS
5 5 (0.84%) CMS
6 4 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 4 (0.67%) Confluence
7 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
7 2 (0.34%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.17%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.51%) Adobe XD
3 3 (0.51%) InVision
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.51%) Sketch
4 2 (0.34%) Maya
4 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 1 (0.17%) Siemens NX
5 1 (0.17%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (3.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.01%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.67%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.51%) SAP MDG-BP
5 2 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
5 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
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 MDG-M
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
6 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 110 (18.55%) AWS
2 73 (12.31%) Azure
3 57 (9.61%) SaaS
4 47 (7.93%) GCP
5 39 (6.58%) Snowflake
6 18 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
7 15 (2.53%) Serverless
8 10 (1.69%) Power Platform
9 9 (1.52%) PaaS
10 8 (1.35%) Cloud Computing
11 7 (1.18%) SuccessFactors
12 6 (1.01%) GitHub
13 5 (0.84%) Azure AI
13 5 (0.84%) dbt
13 5 (0.84%) Matillion
13 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Purview
13 5 (0.84%) OCI
14 4 (0.67%) Amazon EKS
14 4 (0.67%) Dynamics 365
14 4 (0.67%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 17 (2.87%) Firewall
2 7 (1.18%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.18%) Network Security
2 7 (1.18%) SD-WAN
2 7 (1.18%) WAN
2 7 (1.18%) Wireless
3 6 (1.01%) Cisco ISE
3 6 (1.01%) WebEx
4 5 (0.84%) Broadband
4 5 (0.84%) LAN
5 4 (0.67%) Cisco Wireless
5 4 (0.67%) WLAN
6 3 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
7 2 (0.34%) SSL
7 2 (0.34%) Tactical Data Link
8 1 (0.17%) Bluetooth
8 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
8 1 (0.17%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.89%) Data Lake
3 17 (2.87%) NoSQL
4 11 (1.85%) Big Data
5 8 (1.35%) Power BI
6 6 (1.01%) Hadoop
6 6 (1.01%) Tableau
7 5 (0.84%) Data Mining
7 5 (0.84%) Metadata
8 4 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.51%) Delta Lake
10 2 (0.34%) Amazon Redshift
10 2 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.34%) SAP Data Services
10 2 (0.34%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server
11 1 (0.17%) InterSystems Cache
11 1 (0.17%) Redis
11 1 (0.17%) SAP BW
11 1 (0.17%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 13 (2.19%) Cucumber
2 12 (2.02%) GitLab
3 5 (0.84%) MLflow
4 4 (0.67%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Axure RP
5 3 (0.51%) Git
6 2 (0.34%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.34%) rollup.js
7 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.17%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.17%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.17%) Gatling
7 1 (0.17%) JMeter
7 1 (0.17%) Maven
7 1 (0.17%) Selenium
7 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 214 (36.09%) Finance
2 159 (26.81%) Social Skills
3 106 (17.88%) Analytical Skills
4 105 (17.71%) Marketing
5 81 (13.66%) Public Sector
6 63 (10.62%) Presentation Skills
7 56 (9.44%) Retail
8 40 (6.75%) Banking
9 39 (6.58%) Legal
10 37 (6.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 28 (4.72%) Influencing Skills
12 23 (3.88%) Financial Institution
13 21 (3.54%) Law
14 18 (3.04%) Brand Awareness
15 17 (2.87%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (2.70%) Aerospace
17 12 (2.02%) Manufacturing
17 12 (2.02%) Organisational Skills
18 10 (1.69%) Games
18 10 (1.69%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 150 (25.30%) Senior
2 93 (15.68%) Architect
3 89 (15.01%) Consultant
4 71 (11.97%) Lead
5 61 (10.29%) Account Executive
6 57 (9.61%) Sales Executive
7 44 (7.42%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.75%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.58%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.73%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.56%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.56%) Sales Account Executive
12 28 (4.72%) Business Architect
13 26 (4.38%) Senior Architect
13 26 (4.38%) Senior Consultant
14 24 (4.05%) Business Consultant
14 24 (4.05%) Data Management Specialist
14 24 (4.05%) Product Specialist
15 22 (3.71%) Business Manager
15 22 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (3.20%) Kafka
2 18 (3.04%) Spring
2 18 (3.04%) Spring Boot
3 6 (1.01%) REST
3 6 (1.01%) SOAP
3 6 (1.01%) XML
4 5 (0.84%) OAuth
4 5 (0.84%) OAuth2
4 5 (0.84%) Play Framework
5 4 (0.67%) CSS
5 4 (0.67%) Flutter
5 4 (0.67%) HTML
5 4 (0.67%) PyTorch
5 4 (0.67%) React
5 4 (0.67%) TensorFlow
5 4 (0.67%) VML
6 3 (0.51%) LangChain
6 3 (0.51%) PySpark
7 2 (0.34%) LangGraph
7 2 (0.34%) XBRL
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.26%) Cloud Native
2 41 (6.91%) Enterprise Software
3 26 (4.38%) Life Science
4 25 (4.22%) Blog
5 19 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
5 19 (3.20%) e-Learning
6 18 (3.04%) Management Information System
6 18 (3.04%) Self-Motivation
7 17 (2.87%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.87%) Product Ownership
8 15 (2.53%) Web Conferencing
9 13 (2.19%) Onboarding
9 13 (2.19%) Public Cloud
10 12 (2.02%) Legacy Applications
11 11 (1.85%) Podcast
11 11 (1.85%) Social Media
12 10 (1.69%) Data Fabric
12 10 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.52%) Enterprise Cloud
13 9 (1.52%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.51%) Windows
2 2 (0.34%) Linux
3 1 (0.17%) VMS
3 1 (0.17%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 187 (31.53%) Business Development
2 179 (30.19%) AI
3 173 (29.17%) Decision-Making
4 146 (24.62%) Mentoring
5 127 (21.42%) Roadmaps
6 126 (21.25%) Analytics
7 102 (17.20%) Agile
8 80 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
9 78 (13.15%) Workshop Facilitation
10 77 (12.98%) Stakeholder Management
11 76 (12.82%) Business Strategy
12 65 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
13 63 (10.62%) Cybersecurity
14 62 (10.46%) Strategic Thinking
15 60 (10.12%) B2B
16 58 (9.78%) DevOps
17 55 (9.27%) Risk Management
17 55 (9.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 54 (9.11%) Coaching
18 54 (9.11%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 47 (7.93%) Java
2 43 (7.25%) Python
3 26 (4.38%) SQL
4 14 (2.36%) R
5 5 (0.84%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.84%) Scala
6 4 (0.67%) C#
6 4 (0.67%) Go
7 3 (0.51%) ABAP
7 3 (0.51%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.34%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.17%) PHP
Qualifications
1 152 (25.63%) Degree
2 73 (12.31%) Security Cleared
3 37 (6.24%) SC Cleared
4 31 (5.23%) Master's Degree
5 24 (4.05%) CISSP
6 23 (3.88%) CISM
7 19 (3.20%) AWS Certification
8 15 (2.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 14 (2.36%) DV Cleared
10 13 (2.19%) Azure Certification
10 13 (2.19%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 12 (2.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 12 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
11 12 (2.02%) PhD
12 11 (1.85%) DBS Check
12 11 (1.85%) MBA
13 9 (1.52%) CRISC
14 7 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
14 7 (1.18%) GSEC
15 6 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.73%) GRC
2 24 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (3.88%) NIST
4 19 (3.20%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.36%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.36%) JSP 440
6 12 (2.02%) GDPR
7 11 (1.85%) QA
8 10 (1.69%) GxP
9 9 (1.52%) EU AI Act
10 8 (1.35%) Basel III
11 7 (1.18%) Government Security Classifications
11 7 (1.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 7 (1.18%) PCI DSS
11 7 (1.18%) SLA
12 6 (1.01%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.51%) IFRS
13 3 (0.51%) WCAG
14 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
14 2 (0.34%) NIST 800
System Software
1 9 (1.52%) Docker
2 4 (0.67%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 12 (2.02%) Kubernetes
2 11 (1.85%) Terraform
3 8 (1.35%) Ansible
4 5 (0.84%) Puppet
5 3 (0.51%) Progress Chef
6 2 (0.34%) Argo
6 2 (0.34%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
6 2 (0.34%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.34%) Salt
7 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
7 1 (0.17%) Consul
7 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
7 1 (0.17%) Grafana
7 1 (0.17%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (16.19%) Dell
2 41 (6.91%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.58%) SAP
4 37 (6.24%) Databricks
5 25 (4.22%) Informatica
6 24 (4.05%) Denodo
6 24 (4.05%) Teradata
7 23 (3.88%) ServiceNow
8 22 (3.71%) Salesforce
9 18 (3.04%) Google
10 17 (2.87%) Oracle
11 15 (2.53%) Foundry
12 14 (2.36%) Palantir
13 13 (2.19%) HubSpot
14 7 (1.18%) Cognizant
14 7 (1.18%) Workday
15 6 (1.01%) Aruba
15 6 (1.01%) Cisco
15 6 (1.01%) Fortinet
15 6 (1.01%) Juniper