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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 334 240 457
Rank change year-on-year -94 +217 -199
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 605 633 381
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.27% 0.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.75% 1.43% 0.58%
Number of salaries quoted 262 163 211
10th Percentile £47,500 £45,000 £47,500
25th Percentile £63,750 £58,125 £62,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £81,500 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.43% +1.88% -
75th Percentile £110,000 £105,000 £100,000
90th Percentile £122,250 £124,000 £140,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £80,000 £67,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year +18.52% -15.63% +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 80,408 44,155 65,787
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.09% 88.60% 80.85%
Number of salaries quoted 55,868 25,145 40,215
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £56,075
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -1.92% -6.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £51,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -6.86% -6.58%

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 2 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Thought Leadership in the UK

Thought Leadership
Top 17 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 2 September 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 -72 555 £90,000 +12.50% 1,889
London -48 366 £100,000 +12.68% 1,454
UK excluding London -111 191 £80,000 +18.52% 683
Work from Home -15 137 £74,670 -9.49% 909
North of England -30 60 £95,000 +5.77% 186
Midlands -25 38 £80,000 +23.08% 60
North West -5 35 £95,000 +0.38% 151
South East -122 29 £55,000 +25.71% 78
East of England - 25 £60,100 - 24
West Midlands -23 23 £80,000 +39.13% 39
Wales -52 17 £55,000 +15.79% 5
East Midlands -14 15 £70,000 - 21
South West -65 15 £59,750 -25.31% 116
Yorkshire -43 14 £67,500 -20.59% 26
North East -47 11 £100,000 +17.65% 9
Scotland -10 6 £110,000 +37.50% 150
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 66

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 16 (2.64%) Palantir Foundry
2 10 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (0.99%) Apache Spark
4 5 (0.83%) Confluence
5 4 (0.66%) CMS
6 3 (0.50%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.50%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
8 1 (0.17%) Apache
8 1 (0.17%) Drupal
8 1 (0.17%) IIS
8 1 (0.17%) nginx
8 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.17%) WordPress
Applications
1 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
1 5 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 25 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.99%) Distributed Ledger
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG
3 4 (0.66%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 3 (0.50%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-BP
4 3 (0.50%) Summit
5 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.17%) Magento
6 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-M
6 1 (0.17%) SAP MDG-S
Cloud Services
1 177 (29.26%) AWS
2 106 (17.52%) Azure
3 59 (9.75%) GCP
3 59 (9.75%) SaaS
4 35 (5.79%) Cloud Computing
5 32 (5.29%) AWS CloudFormation
6 26 (4.30%) Serverless
7 21 (3.47%) Snowflake
8 18 (2.98%) Power Platform
9 16 (2.64%) Amazon Bedrock
9 16 (2.64%) GitHub
10 15 (2.48%) Azure AI
11 9 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
11 9 (1.49%) Amazon S3
11 9 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.49%) PaaS
12 8 (1.32%) Amazon ECS
12 8 (1.32%) Microsoft 365
13 7 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 14 (2.31%) Firewall
2 10 (1.65%) Internet
3 9 (1.49%) WAN
3 9 (1.49%) Wireless
4 8 (1.32%) SD-WAN
5 7 (1.16%) Broadband
5 7 (1.16%) Cisco ISE
5 7 (1.16%) Cisco Wireless
5 7 (1.16%) LAN
5 7 (1.16%) WebEx
5 7 (1.16%) WLAN
6 4 (0.66%) Network Security
7 3 (0.50%) Intrusion Detection
8 2 (0.33%) AMQP
8 2 (0.33%) BGP
8 2 (0.33%) Cisco IPT
8 2 (0.33%) MQTT
8 2 (0.33%) OSPF
8 2 (0.33%) SSL
8 2 (0.33%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (4.46%) NoSQL
2 25 (4.13%) Data Warehouse
3 21 (3.47%) Data Lake
4 20 (3.31%) Data Mining
5 19 (3.14%) Tableau
6 17 (2.81%) Amazon QuickSight
7 16 (2.64%) Power BI
8 8 (1.32%) Metadata
9 7 (1.16%) Big Data
10 5 (0.83%) Geospatial Data
10 5 (0.83%) SAP HANA
11 4 (0.66%) BusinessObjects
11 4 (0.66%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.66%) Hadoop
12 3 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.50%) Semantic Layer
12 3 (0.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 2 (0.33%) Amazon RDS
13 2 (0.33%) MongoDB
13 2 (0.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 24 (3.97%) GitLab
2 22 (3.64%) Cucumber
3 8 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.16%) Git
5 6 (0.99%) Maven
5 6 (0.99%) MLflow
6 5 (0.83%) JIRA
7 4 (0.66%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.33%) Ant
8 2 (0.33%) Apache Ivy
8 2 (0.33%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
8 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
8 2 (0.33%) Vite
9 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.17%) Gatling
9 1 (0.17%) JMeter
9 1 (0.17%) mountebank
9 1 (0.17%) Vagrant
General
1 240 (39.67%) Finance
2 191 (31.57%) Social Skills
3 133 (21.98%) Marketing
4 100 (16.53%) Public Sector
5 72 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
6 62 (10.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 61 (10.08%) Retail
8 50 (8.26%) Banking
9 48 (7.93%) Presentation Skills
10 46 (7.60%) Influencing Skills
11 34 (5.62%) Legal
12 27 (4.46%) Law
13 22 (3.64%) Back Office
14 20 (3.31%) Brand Awareness
14 20 (3.31%) Financial Institution
15 17 (2.81%) Public Speaking
16 16 (2.64%) Telecoms
17 15 (2.48%) Aerospace
17 15 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
18 14 (2.31%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 130 (21.49%) Senior
2 115 (19.01%) Architect
3 68 (11.24%) Lead
4 64 (10.58%) Consultant
5 45 (7.44%) Senior Manager
6 34 (5.62%) Sales Executive
6 34 (5.62%) Solutions Architect
7 31 (5.12%) Product Manager
8 28 (4.63%) Senior Architect
9 24 (3.97%) Lead Architect
10 23 (3.80%) Senior Product Manager
11 22 (3.64%) Java Engineer
12 21 (3.47%) Principal Engineer
12 21 (3.47%) Principal Java Engineer
12 21 (3.47%) Security Architect
12 21 (3.47%) Senior Consultant
13 20 (3.31%) Account Manager
13 20 (3.31%) Business Development Executive
13 20 (3.31%) Digital Product Manager
13 20 (3.31%) Senior Digital Product Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.29%) Kafka
2 23 (3.80%) Spring
2 23 (3.80%) Spring Boot
3 22 (3.64%) Terraform
4 13 (2.15%) LangGraph
5 12 (1.98%) LangChain
6 9 (1.49%) FastAPI
7 6 (0.99%) CrewAI
7 6 (0.99%) XML
8 5 (0.83%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.66%) Middleware
9 4 (0.66%) PySpark
9 4 (0.66%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
9 4 (0.66%) React
9 4 (0.66%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.66%) VML
10 3 (0.50%) CSS
10 3 (0.50%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.50%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 79 (13.06%) Cloud Native
2 63 (10.41%) Onboarding
3 45 (7.44%) Enterprise Software
4 38 (6.28%) Blog
5 27 (4.46%) AI Agents
6 26 (4.30%) Product Ownership
7 25 (4.13%) Distributed Systems
8 24 (3.97%) e-Learning
9 23 (3.80%) Public Cloud
10 18 (2.98%) Social Media
11 15 (2.48%) Web Conferencing
12 14 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (1.98%) Enterprise Cloud
13 12 (1.98%) Management Information System
14 11 (1.82%) Legacy Applications
14 11 (1.82%) NHS
15 10 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
16 9 (1.49%) Hackathon
17 8 (1.32%) Low-Code
18 7 (1.16%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 8 (1.32%) Linux
2 6 (0.99%) Windows
3 3 (0.50%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.33%) Solaris
4 2 (0.33%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 216 (35.70%) AI
2 181 (29.92%) Mentoring
3 174 (28.76%) Business Development
4 169 (27.93%) Roadmaps
5 142 (23.47%) Analytics
6 137 (22.64%) Decision-Making
7 122 (20.17%) Stakeholder Management
8 110 (18.18%) Agile
9 82 (13.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 77 (12.73%) CI/CD
10 77 (12.73%) Machine Learning
11 75 (12.40%) DevOps
11 75 (12.40%) Risk Management
12 72 (11.90%) Problem-Solving
13 69 (11.40%) Coaching
14 66 (10.91%) Infrastructure as Code
15 63 (10.41%) B2B
16 57 (9.42%) Strategic Thinking
16 57 (9.42%) Technical Leadership
17 53 (8.76%) Business Strategy
Programming Languages
1 78 (12.89%) Python
2 57 (9.42%) SQL
3 42 (6.94%) Java
4 11 (1.82%) R
5 5 (0.83%) Bash
5 5 (0.83%) PowerShell
6 3 (0.50%) Go
7 2 (0.33%) ABAP
7 2 (0.33%) Apex Code
7 2 (0.33%) Bicep
7 2 (0.33%) C#
7 2 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
7 2 (0.33%) Scala
7 2 (0.33%) SOQL
7 2 (0.33%) SOSL
7 2 (0.33%) TypeScript
8 1 (0.17%) PHP
8 1 (0.17%) Ruby
8 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 153 (25.29%) Degree
2 93 (15.37%) Security Cleared
3 63 (10.41%) SC Cleared
4 43 (7.11%) AWS Certification
5 25 (4.13%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 24 (3.97%) Master's Degree
7 18 (2.98%) Azure Certification
7 18 (2.98%) CISSP
7 18 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (2.64%) CISM
9 15 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 12 (1.98%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 12 (1.98%) Postgraduate
11 9 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
11 9 (1.49%) CRISC
11 9 (1.49%) MBA
12 8 (1.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (1.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 7 (1.16%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (4.30%) GRC
3 23 (3.80%) GDPR
4 21 (3.47%) NIST
5 19 (3.14%) Data Quality
6 18 (2.98%) Accessibility
7 13 (2.15%) QA
8 11 (1.82%) SLA
9 10 (1.65%) PCI DSS
10 9 (1.49%) JSP 440
11 7 (1.16%) Basel III
11 7 (1.16%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 6 (0.99%) EU AI Act
13 5 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
14 4 (0.66%) IFRS
14 4 (0.66%) PMO
15 3 (0.50%) Government Security Classifications
15 3 (0.50%) NCSC
15 3 (0.50%) SOC 2
16 2 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 24 (3.97%) Docker
2 5 (0.83%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 30 (4.96%) Kubernetes
2 13 (2.15%) Ansible
3 6 (0.99%) Puppet
4 4 (0.66%) Argo
4 4 (0.66%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.33%) Istio
5 2 (0.33%) Salt
6 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.17%) AppManager
6 1 (0.17%) Consul
6 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.17%) Packer
6 1 (0.17%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 63 (10.41%) Microsoft
2 47 (7.77%) Dell
3 34 (5.62%) SAP
4 31 (5.12%) Databricks
5 28 (4.63%) Google
6 23 (3.80%) Salesforce
7 20 (3.31%) Informatica
8 19 (3.14%) Foundry
9 17 (2.81%) ServiceNow
9 17 (2.81%) Teradata
10 16 (2.64%) Denodo
10 16 (2.64%) Palantir
11 11 (1.82%) Cisco
11 11 (1.82%) OpenAI
12 9 (1.49%) Oracle
13 8 (1.32%) Fortinet
14 7 (1.16%) Aruba
14 7 (1.16%) Juniper
15 6 (0.99%) Cognizant
15 6 (0.99%) HubSpot