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

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 305 254 422
Rank change year-on-year -51 +168 -168
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 611 583 563
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.18% 0.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.84% 1.31% 0.68%
Number of salaries quoted 243 163 364
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £56,875 £50,938
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 £104,375 £97,500
90th Percentile £117,500 £120,000 £128,875
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £66,250 £70,000
% change year-on-year +13.21% -5.36% +0.72%

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 72,826 44,439 83,222
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.81% 90.30% 82.24%
Number of salaries quoted 50,337 24,847 58,274
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -8.71%
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 12 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 12 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 -46 554 £80,000 +1.59% 481
London -14 354 £85,000 -4.23% 336
UK excluding London -85 188 £75,000 +13.21% 175
Work from Home -6 134 £67,500 -18.18% 162
North of England 0 67 £95,000 +5.77% 40
East of England - 47 £60,100 - 7
North West -4 42 £95,000 +0.38% 21
Midlands -17 35 £80,000 +56.10% 35
South East -118 23 £37,500 -23.47% 50
West Midlands -19 19 £80,000 +56.10% 18
Yorkshire -24 18 £76,840 +2.45% 12
East Midlands -13 16 £50,000 - 17
South West -54 10 £59,750 -25.31% 16
North East -51 7 £100,000 +71.67% 7
Scotland -3 3 £110,000 +15.79% 14
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 5

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 (2.29%) Palantir Foundry
2 9 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.15%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.82%) CMS
5 4 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (0.65%) Confluence
6 2 (0.33%) SAS
6 2 (0.33%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
6 2 (0.33%) WordPress
7 1 (0.16%) Apache
7 1 (0.16%) Drupal
7 1 (0.16%) IIS
7 1 (0.16%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (1.64%) 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 24 (3.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.82%) SAP MDG
4 4 (0.65%) SAP MDG-F
5 3 (0.49%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.49%) SAP MDG-BP
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
6 2 (0.33%) Summit
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
1 146 (23.90%) AWS
2 87 (14.24%) Azure
3 64 (10.47%) SaaS
4 50 (8.18%) GCP
5 29 (4.75%) Cloud Computing
5 29 (4.75%) Snowflake
6 27 (4.42%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (3.44%) Serverless
8 14 (2.29%) Power Platform
9 12 (1.96%) Amazon Bedrock
10 11 (1.80%) GitHub
10 11 (1.80%) PaaS
11 9 (1.47%) Azure AI
12 8 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (1.31%) SuccessFactors
13 7 (1.15%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (0.98%) Amazon S3
14 6 (0.98%) Azure DevOps
14 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.27%) Firewall
2 8 (1.31%) Internet
3 7 (1.15%) Intrusion Detection
3 7 (1.15%) Network Security
3 7 (1.15%) Wireless
4 6 (0.98%) Cisco ISE
4 6 (0.98%) SD-WAN
4 6 (0.98%) WAN
4 6 (0.98%) WebEx
5 5 (0.82%) Broadband
6 4 (0.65%) Cisco Wireless
6 4 (0.65%) LAN
6 4 (0.65%) WLAN
7 3 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.33%) SSL
8 2 (0.33%) Tactical Data Link
9 1 (0.16%) AMQP
9 1 (0.16%) MQTT
9 1 (0.16%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
2 29 (4.75%) Data Lake
3 22 (3.60%) NoSQL
4 12 (1.96%) Power BI
5 8 (1.31%) Big Data
6 5 (0.82%) Hadoop
6 5 (0.82%) Metadata
6 5 (0.82%) SAP HANA
7 4 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (0.65%) Data Mining
7 4 (0.65%) Delta Lake
8 3 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
8 3 (0.49%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (0.49%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
9 2 (0.33%) SAP BW
9 2 (0.33%) SQL Server
9 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 2 (0.33%) Tableau
10 1 (0.16%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 19 (3.11%) Cucumber
1 19 (3.11%) GitLab
2 6 (0.98%) MLflow
3 4 (0.65%) JIRA
4 3 (0.49%) Claude Code
4 3 (0.49%) Git
4 3 (0.49%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.49%) Maven
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
1 208 (34.04%) Finance
2 167 (27.33%) Social Skills
3 109 (17.84%) Marketing
4 99 (16.20%) Analytical Skills
5 98 (16.04%) Public Sector
6 63 (10.31%) Presentation Skills
7 59 (9.66%) Retail
8 44 (7.20%) Banking
9 41 (6.71%) Legal
10 35 (5.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 35 (5.73%) Influencing Skills
11 20 (3.27%) Brand Awareness
11 20 (3.27%) Financial Institution
12 15 (2.45%) Telecoms
13 14 (2.29%) Manufacturing
14 13 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
15 12 (1.96%) Law
16 11 (1.80%) Aerospace
17 10 (1.64%) Public Speaking
18 8 (1.31%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 151 (24.71%) Senior
2 105 (17.18%) Architect
3 80 (13.09%) Consultant
4 72 (11.78%) Lead
5 59 (9.66%) Sales Executive
6 57 (9.33%) Account Executive
7 45 (7.36%) Senior Manager
8 40 (6.55%) Business Development Executive
9 39 (6.38%) Senior Sales Executive
10 34 (5.56%) Senior Account Executive
11 33 (5.40%) Business Sales Executive
11 33 (5.40%) Sales Account Executive
12 30 (4.91%) Solutions Architect
13 29 (4.75%) Senior Architect
14 25 (4.09%) Senior Consultant
15 24 (3.93%) Data Management Specialist
15 24 (3.93%) Product Specialist
16 23 (3.76%) Product Manager
17 22 (3.60%) Lead Architect
18 21 (3.44%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (4.75%) Kafka
2 23 (3.76%) Spring
2 23 (3.76%) Spring Boot
3 8 (1.31%) LangGraph
4 7 (1.15%) LangChain
5 6 (0.98%) REST
5 6 (0.98%) SOAP
5 6 (0.98%) XML
6 5 (0.82%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.82%) TensorFlow
7 4 (0.65%) FastAPI
7 4 (0.65%) PySpark
7 4 (0.65%) VML
8 3 (0.49%) CrewAI
8 3 (0.49%) Flutter
8 3 (0.49%) Model Context Protocol
8 3 (0.49%) OAuth
8 3 (0.49%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.49%) RabbitMQ
8 3 (0.49%) React
Miscellaneous
1 62 (10.15%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.53%) Enterprise Software
3 41 (6.71%) Onboarding
4 31 (5.07%) Blog
5 25 (4.09%) e-Learning
6 22 (3.60%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (3.27%) AI Agents
7 20 (3.27%) Public Cloud
8 18 (2.95%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.95%) Self-Motivation
9 17 (2.78%) Product Ownership
10 14 (2.29%) Social Media
10 14 (2.29%) Web Conferencing
11 12 (1.96%) Legacy Applications
11 12 (1.96%) NHS
12 11 (1.80%) Data Fabric
12 11 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
12 11 (1.80%) Life Science
13 10 (1.64%) Enterprise Cloud
13 10 (1.64%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 5 (0.82%) Linux
1 5 (0.82%) Windows
2 1 (0.16%) Unix
2 1 (0.16%) VMS
2 1 (0.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 197 (32.24%) AI
2 181 (29.62%) Business Development
3 165 (27.00%) Mentoring
4 162 (26.51%) Decision-Making
5 144 (23.57%) Roadmaps
6 139 (22.75%) Analytics
7 98 (16.04%) Agile
8 81 (13.26%) Stakeholder Management
9 75 (12.27%) Problem-Solving
10 73 (11.95%) DevOps
11 72 (11.78%) B2B
12 70 (11.46%) Business Strategy
13 69 (11.29%) Continuous Improvement
14 65 (10.64%) Cybersecurity
14 65 (10.64%) Strategic Thinking
15 64 (10.47%) CI/CD
16 61 (9.98%) Workshop Facilitation
17 58 (9.49%) Machine Learning
18 57 (9.33%) Coaching
19 54 (8.84%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 45 (7.36%) Python
2 43 (7.04%) Java
3 32 (5.24%) SQL
4 9 (1.47%) R
5 4 (0.65%) Go
5 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.49%) Bash
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
1 160 (26.19%) Degree
2 80 (13.09%) Security Cleared
3 45 (7.36%) SC Cleared
4 35 (5.73%) AWS Certification
5 24 (3.93%) CISSP
6 23 (3.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 23 (3.76%) CISM
7 19 (3.11%) Master's Degree
8 15 (2.45%) Azure Certification
9 14 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (2.29%) DV Cleared
10 13 (2.13%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 12 (1.96%) CRISC
12 11 (1.80%) DBS Check
13 9 (1.47%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 9 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
13 9 (1.47%) MBA
14 7 (1.15%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (1.15%) GSEC
15 6 (0.98%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (5.89%) GRC
2 30 (4.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.60%) NIST
4 18 (2.95%) GDPR
5 14 (2.29%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.29%) JSP 440
6 12 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 11 (1.80%) PCI DSS
8 10 (1.64%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 10 (1.64%) QA
9 9 (1.47%) EU AI Act
9 9 (1.47%) SLA
10 8 (1.31%) Basel III
11 7 (1.15%) Government Security Classifications
12 5 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
13 3 (0.49%) IFRS
13 3 (0.49%) PMO
14 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.33%) GAAP
14 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
System Software
1 17 (2.78%) Docker
2 6 (0.98%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.33%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 21 (3.44%) Kubernetes
2 17 (2.78%) Terraform
3 11 (1.80%) Ansible
4 5 (0.82%) 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 (15.71%) Dell
2 58 (9.49%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.22%) SAP
4 33 (5.40%) Databricks
5 25 (4.09%) Informatica
5 25 (4.09%) Salesforce
5 25 (4.09%) Teradata
6 24 (3.93%) Denodo
7 21 (3.44%) ServiceNow
8 19 (3.11%) Google
9 15 (2.45%) Foundry
10 14 (2.29%) Palantir
11 13 (2.13%) HubSpot
12 7 (1.15%) Cisco
12 7 (1.15%) Oracle
13 6 (0.98%) Aruba
13 6 (0.98%) Cognizant
13 6 (0.98%) Fortinet
13 6 (0.98%) Juniper
13 6 (0.98%) Workday