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 8 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 268 464 265
Rank change year-on-year +196 -199 -39
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 511 298 652
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.00% 0.44% 1.22%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 0.53% 1.30%
Number of salaries quoted 151 141 361
10th Percentile £40,000 £48,750 £60,000
25th Percentile £58,750 £65,000 £72,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £80,000 £82,500
Median % change year-on-year - -3.03% -2.94%
75th Percentile £112,500 £97,500 £97,290
90th Percentile £122,500 £110,000 £117,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £63,170 £80,000 £79,632
% change year-on-year -21.04% +0.46% +9.84%

All Process and 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 44,303 55,889 50,206
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 86.67% 82.62% 93.88%
Number of salaries quoted 26,710 29,381 38,581
10th Percentile £28,250 £33,875 £32,500
25th Percentile £35,500 £45,000 £43,800
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £54,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% - -
75th Percentile £75,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,500 £98,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,750 £54,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -13.43% +2.86% -

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 8 November 2025.

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 8 November 2025. 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 +233 480 £80,000 +2.56% 1,529
London +208 343 £100,000 +18.79% 833
UK excluding London +88 142 £63,170 -21.04% 1,048
Work from Home +54 79 £56,250 -30.77% 650
South East +79 69 £35,000 -54.84% 694
North of England +24 22 £65,000 +8.33% 145
North West +33 19 £62,500 +2.04% 83
Midlands +56 15 £87,500 +34.62% 72
Scotland -18 14 £65,000 -35.00% 43
West Midlands +33 11 £67,500 +3.85% 34
South West +27 10 £61,920 -22.60% 52
East of England +12 9 £45,500 -49.30% 25
Yorkshire +8 3 £75,000 +36.36% 40
East Midlands +21 2 £100,000 +50.94% 33
Northern Ireland - 2 - - 6
Wales - 1 £47,500 - 9

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 (2.74%) Apache Spark
2 6 (1.17%) nginx
2 6 (1.17%) WordPress
3 5 (0.98%) CMS
4 4 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (0.78%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.39%) CICS
5 2 (0.39%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.39%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.20%) Confluence
6 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 14 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (2.15%) Maya
4 7 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
5 5 (0.98%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.78%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.78%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.59%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.59%) Elementor
8 2 (0.39%) Adobe After Effects
8 2 (0.39%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 32 (6.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (1.37%) Endur
4 6 (1.17%) SAP SCM
5 4 (0.78%) Payment Gateway
5 4 (0.78%) SAP EWM
6 3 (0.59%) SAP CO
6 3 (0.59%) SAP ERP
6 3 (0.59%) SAP FI
6 3 (0.59%) SAP FI/CO
6 3 (0.59%) SAP IBP
6 3 (0.59%) SAP MDG
6 3 (0.59%) SAP PP
7 2 (0.39%) SAP APO
7 2 (0.39%) SAP FSCM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP MM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 2 (0.39%) SAP QM
7 2 (0.39%) SAP WM
7 2 (0.39%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 117 (22.90%) Azure
2 96 (18.79%) AWS
3 39 (7.63%) GCP
4 34 (6.65%) SaaS
5 25 (4.89%) Amazon Bedrock
5 25 (4.89%) Vertex AI
6 22 (4.31%) Power Platform
7 14 (2.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 14 (2.74%) Cloud Computing
7 14 (2.74%) GitHub
7 14 (2.74%) Snowflake
8 13 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
9 10 (1.96%) Serverless
10 9 (1.76%) OCI
11 6 (1.17%) Azure Machine Learning
11 6 (1.17%) OpenShift
12 5 (0.98%) Dynamics 365
12 5 (0.98%) Google Ads
12 5 (0.98%) IaaS
12 5 (0.98%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.57%) DNS
2 6 (1.17%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
2 6 (1.17%) Network Security
3 1 (0.20%) BGP
3 1 (0.20%) Firewall
3 1 (0.20%) LAN
3 1 (0.20%) MPLS
3 1 (0.20%) Software-Defined Networking
3 1 (0.20%) SSH
3 1 (0.20%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.20%) WAN
3 1 (0.20%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 37 (7.24%) Data Lake
2 30 (5.87%) NoSQL
3 29 (5.68%) Data Warehouse
4 26 (5.09%) Metadata
5 21 (4.11%) Power BI
6 17 (3.33%) Big Data
7 14 (2.74%) Hadoop
8 13 (2.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 6 (1.17%) Tableau
10 5 (0.98%) BigQuery
11 4 (0.78%) DataStage
11 4 (0.78%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.78%) QlikView
12 3 (0.59%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.59%) Looker
12 3 (0.59%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.59%) SQL Server
13 2 (0.39%) DB2
13 2 (0.39%) Oracle Reports
14 1 (0.20%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 15 (2.94%) ERwin
2 11 (2.15%) JIRA
3 7 (1.37%) GitLab
4 4 (0.78%) ER Studio
4 4 (0.78%) PowerDesigner
5 3 (0.59%) eCATT
5 3 (0.59%) MLflow
6 1 (0.20%) Git
6 1 (0.20%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.20%) Vite
6 1 (0.20%) WaveMaker
General
1 178 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 173 (33.86%) Analytical Skills
3 161 (31.51%) Law
4 158 (30.92%) Finance
5 106 (20.74%) Marketing
6 51 (9.98%) Games
6 51 (9.98%) Retail
7 50 (9.78%) Influencing Skills
8 45 (8.81%) Presentation Skills
9 36 (7.05%) Banking
10 31 (6.07%) Public Sector
11 24 (4.70%) Legal
12 21 (4.11%) Advertising
13 20 (3.91%) Pharmaceutical
14 16 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 13 (2.54%) Manufacturing
16 10 (1.96%) Publishing
17 8 (1.57%) Billing
17 8 (1.57%) Dutch Language
17 8 (1.57%) French Language
Job Titles
1 128 (25.05%) Senior
2 90 (17.61%) Lead
3 82 (16.05%) Architect
4 63 (12.33%) Consultant
5 41 (8.02%) Senior Consultant
6 40 (7.83%) Solutions Architect
7 27 (5.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
8 25 (4.89%) Gen AI Consultant
9 23 (4.50%) Account Executive
10 21 (4.11%) Lead Architect
11 20 (3.91%) Product Lead
12 18 (3.52%) Data Architect
13 16 (3.13%) Data Scientist
13 16 (3.13%) IT Manager
13 16 (3.13%) Marketing Manager
13 16 (3.13%) Senior Architect
14 15 (2.94%) Senior Manager
14 15 (2.94%) ServiceNow Architect
15 14 (2.74%) Senior Solutions Architect
16 12 (2.35%) Account Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (5.09%) LangChain
2 16 (3.13%) React
3 15 (2.94%) REST
4 13 (2.54%) Kafka
5 10 (1.96%) AngularJS
6 8 (1.57%) .NET
7 7 (1.37%) Vue
8 6 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (0.98%) ASP.NET
9 5 (0.98%) Hugging Face
9 5 (0.98%) JSON
9 5 (0.98%) XML
10 4 (0.78%) Middleware
11 3 (0.59%) .NET Framework
11 3 (0.59%) SAP Fiori
11 3 (0.59%) SAPUI5
12 2 (0.39%) CSS
12 2 (0.39%) Node.js
12 2 (0.39%) PyTorch
12 2 (0.39%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 49 (9.59%) Algorithms
2 44 (8.61%) Analytical Mindset
3 41 (8.02%) Product Ownership
4 38 (7.44%) Legacy Systems
5 31 (6.07%) Self-Motivation
6 27 (5.28%) Enterprise Software
7 25 (4.89%) FMCG
8 24 (4.70%) Virtual Team
9 20 (3.91%) Life Science
10 18 (3.52%) Management Information System
10 18 (3.52%) Onboarding
11 17 (3.33%) Social Media
12 13 (2.54%) Blog
12 13 (2.54%) Cloud Native
13 12 (2.35%) Digital Media
14 11 (2.15%) Data Structures
15 10 (1.96%) Public Cloud
16 8 (1.57%) Blockchain
16 8 (1.57%) Web Conferencing
17 7 (1.37%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.20%) Android
1 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.20%) Linux
1 1 (0.20%) Solaris
1 1 (0.20%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (39.73%) AI
2 194 (37.96%) Analytics
2 194 (37.96%) Roadmaps
3 154 (30.14%) Agile
4 135 (26.42%) Machine Learning
5 120 (23.48%) Problem-Solving
6 102 (19.96%) Business Strategy
7 96 (18.79%) Decision-Making
8 92 (18.00%) Computer Science
9 90 (17.61%) Business Development
10 83 (16.24%) Data Science
11 79 (15.46%) Stakeholder Management
12 77 (15.07%) DevOps
12 77 (15.07%) Generative AI
13 75 (14.68%) Project Management
14 72 (14.09%) Mentoring
15 70 (13.70%) IT Strategy
16 57 (11.15%) Coaching
17 56 (10.96%) B2B
18 55 (10.76%) Strategic Roadmap
Programming Languages
1 63 (12.33%) Python
2 31 (6.07%) SQL
3 17 (3.33%) JavaScript
4 10 (1.96%) Java
5 6 (1.17%) C#
6 4 (0.78%) C++
6 4 (0.78%) PowerShell
7 2 (0.39%) Bash
7 2 (0.39%) Scala
8 1 (0.20%) Bicep
8 1 (0.20%) Bourne shell
8 1 (0.20%) C-shell
8 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
8 1 (0.20%) Perl
8 1 (0.20%) R
8 1 (0.20%) Ruby
8 1 (0.20%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 180 (35.23%) Degree
2 71 (13.89%) Master's Degree
3 59 (11.55%) Computer Science Degree
4 54 (10.57%) PhD
5 17 (3.33%) Security Cleared
6 12 (2.35%) SC Cleared
7 9 (1.76%) TOGAF Certification
8 8 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 8 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (1.57%) PMI Certification
8 8 (1.57%) PMP
9 7 (1.37%) CISSP
9 7 (1.37%) DBS Check
10 6 (1.17%) CCNA
10 6 (1.17%) CCNP
10 6 (1.17%) SAP Certification
11 5 (0.98%) CISM
11 5 (0.98%) MBA
12 4 (0.78%) APMG
12 4 (0.78%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.87%) Data Quality
1 30 (5.87%) QA
2 22 (4.31%) GDPR
3 17 (3.33%) GxP
4 10 (1.96%) Accessibility
4 10 (1.96%) PMO
5 8 (1.57%) SLA
6 7 (1.37%) EMIR
7 4 (0.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.59%) NIST
8 3 (0.59%) P3O
9 2 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.39%) GRC
9 2 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.39%) WCAG
10 1 (0.20%) Basel III
10 1 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 7 (1.37%) Docker
2 2 (0.39%) RACF
3 1 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.20%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 27 (5.28%) Terraform
2 14 (2.74%) Kubernetes
3 5 (0.98%) Ansible
4 3 (0.59%) Grafana
5 1 (0.20%) Oracle ZFS
5 1 (0.20%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 49 (9.59%) Google
2 39 (7.63%) SAP
3 34 (6.65%) Microsoft
4 27 (5.28%) Databricks
5 22 (4.31%) Oracle
6 18 (3.52%) Adobe
6 18 (3.52%) ServiceNow
7 15 (2.94%) Dell
8 10 (1.96%) TikTok
9 9 (1.76%) OpenAI
10 8 (1.57%) Foundry
11 7 (1.37%) F5
11 7 (1.37%) OpenLink
12 6 (1.17%) IBM
12 6 (1.17%) Palantir
12 6 (1.17%) Salesforce
13 5 (0.98%) HubSpot
13 5 (0.98%) Splunk
14 4 (0.78%) Facebook
14 4 (0.78%) Snapchat