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 19 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 296 338 330
Rank change year-on-year +42 -8 -85
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 490 367 731
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.86% 0.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.84% 0.92% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 177 123 500
10th Percentile £44,150 £46,500 £43,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £72,500 £62,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £90,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +12.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £97,500 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £131,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £89,500 £80,000
% change year-on-year -21.79% +11.88% +3.23%

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 58,352 39,745 74,141
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.73% 93.47% 87.16%
Number of salaries quoted 35,337 22,215 56,156
10th Percentile £29,750 £31,750 £29,029
25th Percentile £40,000 £44,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -11.29%
75th Percentile £77,424 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.90%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 +39 421 £80,000 -10.61% 377
London +54 273 £86,500 -3.89% 227
UK excluding London -24 155 £70,000 -21.79% 259
Work from Home -18 90 £80,000 -10.61% 120
North of England -55 44 £80,000 -15.47% 49
East of England +15 38 £60,100 -38.20% 7
South East -38 38 £62,500 -10.71% 144
North West -17 36 £75,000 -20.75% 25
Scotland -26 15 £80,000 -20.00% 9
Midlands -21 10 £62,500 -16.67% 28
South West - 8 £53,250 - 19
West Midlands -8 6 £75,000 - 24
Yorkshire -40 6 £90,000 +46.94% 20
East Midlands - 4 £50,000 - 4
North East -22 2 - - 4
Wales - 2 £42,000 - 3

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 8 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
2 5 (1.02%) CMS
2 5 (1.02%) IIS
3 4 (0.82%) Palantir Foundry
3 4 (0.82%) WordPress
4 3 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.41%) Confluence
5 2 (0.41%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 13 (2.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.43%) Maya
2 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (1.02%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (1.02%) Adobe XD
3 5 (1.02%) InVision
3 5 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.02%) Sketch
4 3 (0.61%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.61%) Elementor
4 3 (0.61%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.20%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.20%) Trello
Business Applications
1 13 (2.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 7 (1.43%) Endur
4 3 (0.61%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.61%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.41%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.41%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.20%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.20%) SAP CO
6 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.20%) SAP FI
6 1 (0.20%) SAP FI/CO
6 1 (0.20%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.20%) SAP PLM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 81 (16.53%) AWS
2 59 (12.04%) Azure
3 46 (9.39%) SaaS
4 38 (7.76%) Snowflake
5 35 (7.14%) GCP
6 11 (2.24%) Power Platform
7 10 (2.04%) GitHub
8 9 (1.84%) Dynamics 365
9 8 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
9 8 (1.63%) Cloud Computing
10 7 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
10 7 (1.43%) dbt
11 6 (1.22%) Matillion
11 6 (1.22%) OCI
11 6 (1.22%) Serverless
11 6 (1.22%) SuccessFactors
12 5 (1.02%) Azure Machine Learning
12 5 (1.02%) Figma
12 5 (1.02%) Google Ads
12 5 (1.02%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.04%) Firewall
2 6 (1.22%) Intrusion Detection
2 6 (1.22%) Network Security
3 4 (0.82%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.82%) WAN
3 4 (0.82%) Wireless
4 3 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.61%) WebEx
4 3 (0.61%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.41%) Broadband
5 2 (0.41%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.41%) LAN
5 2 (0.41%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.20%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.20%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.20%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.20%) SSL
6 1 (0.20%) WLAN
6 1 (0.20%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (6.94%) Data Warehouse
2 23 (4.69%) Data Lake
3 14 (2.86%) NoSQL
4 11 (2.24%) Tableau
5 10 (2.04%) Power BI
6 9 (1.84%) Big Data
7 7 (1.43%) Metadata
8 6 (1.22%) BigQuery
8 6 (1.22%) Hadoop
9 5 (1.02%) Data Mining
10 4 (0.82%) DataStage
10 4 (0.82%) QlikView
10 4 (0.82%) SAP HANA
11 2 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.41%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.41%) Looker
11 2 (0.41%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.41%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (0.41%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.20%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 6 (1.22%) GitLab
1 6 (1.22%) MLflow
2 5 (1.02%) Axure RP
2 5 (1.02%) Cucumber
3 4 (0.82%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.82%) ERwin
3 4 (0.82%) PowerDesigner
4 3 (0.61%) JIRA
5 2 (0.41%) Git
5 2 (0.41%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.20%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.20%) Selenium
6 1 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 182 (37.14%) Finance
2 121 (24.69%) Social Skills
3 89 (18.16%) Marketing
4 88 (17.96%) Analytical Skills
5 59 (12.04%) Public Sector
6 50 (10.20%) Presentation Skills
7 42 (8.57%) Law
8 38 (7.76%) Legal
9 34 (6.94%) Retail
10 31 (6.33%) Banking
11 28 (5.71%) Games
12 27 (5.51%) Influencing Skills
13 26 (5.31%) Pharmaceutical
14 23 (4.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 19 (3.88%) Financial Institution
16 12 (2.45%) Aerospace
17 11 (2.24%) Publishing
18 9 (1.84%) Telecoms
19 7 (1.43%) Manufacturing
19 7 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 106 (21.63%) Senior
2 74 (15.10%) Architect
3 68 (13.88%) Lead
4 67 (13.67%) Consultant
5 48 (9.80%) Account Executive
6 39 (7.96%) Sales Executive
7 33 (6.73%) Senior Sales Executive
8 26 (5.31%) Business Development Executive
9 24 (4.90%) Business Architect
10 23 (4.69%) Senior Manager
11 22 (4.49%) Business Sales Executive
11 22 (4.49%) Sales Account Executive
11 22 (4.49%) Senior Account Executive
12 21 (4.29%) Senior Architect
13 20 (4.08%) Senior Consultant
14 19 (3.88%) Business Consultant
14 19 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (3.67%) Product Specialist
16 17 (3.47%) Business Manager
17 16 (3.27%) Data Management Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.24%) Spring
1 11 (2.24%) Spring Boot
2 9 (1.84%) Kafka
3 8 (1.63%) REST
4 7 (1.43%) CSS
4 7 (1.43%) HTML
5 6 (1.22%) React
5 6 (1.22%) SOAP
6 5 (1.02%) OAuth
6 5 (1.02%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.02%) Play Framework
6 5 (1.02%) PyTorch
6 5 (1.02%) TensorFlow
7 3 (0.61%) Flutter
7 3 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.41%) AngularJS
8 2 (0.41%) PySpark
8 2 (0.41%) SAP Fiori
8 2 (0.41%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.41%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.73%) Life Science
2 30 (6.12%) Self-Motivation
3 29 (5.92%) Blog
4 27 (5.51%) Enterprise Software
5 26 (5.31%) Cloud Native
6 17 (3.47%) Algorithms
7 16 (3.27%) Management Information System
7 16 (3.27%) Social Media
8 14 (2.86%) Web Conferencing
9 13 (2.65%) Onboarding
10 11 (2.24%) AI Agents
10 11 (2.24%) Distributed Systems
10 11 (2.24%) e-Learning
11 10 (2.04%) Product Ownership
12 9 (1.84%) Podcast
13 8 (1.63%) Credit Risk
13 8 (1.63%) Data Fabric
13 8 (1.63%) NHS
13 8 (1.63%) Virtual Team
14 7 (1.43%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 2 (0.41%) Windows
2 1 (0.20%) Android
2 1 (0.20%) Apple iOS
2 1 (0.20%) Linux
2 1 (0.20%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 180 (36.73%) AI
2 141 (28.78%) Business Development
2 141 (28.78%) Decision-Making
3 134 (27.35%) Analytics
4 105 (21.43%) Agile
5 101 (20.61%) Roadmaps
6 97 (19.80%) Mentoring
7 74 (15.10%) Business Strategy
8 71 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
9 63 (12.86%) Cybersecurity
10 62 (12.65%) Workshop Facilitation
11 61 (12.45%) B2B
12 59 (12.04%) Generative AI
12 59 (12.04%) Stakeholder Management
13 56 (11.43%) Computer Science
13 56 (11.43%) Strategic Thinking
14 55 (11.22%) Data Science
14 55 (11.22%) Use Case
15 54 (11.02%) Machine Learning
16 53 (10.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 35 (7.14%) Python
2 28 (5.71%) Java
3 24 (4.90%) SQL
4 8 (1.63%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.22%) R
6 5 (1.02%) Kotlin
6 5 (1.02%) Scala
7 4 (0.82%) C#
8 3 (0.61%) Go
8 3 (0.61%) PowerShell
9 1 (0.20%) ABAP
9 1 (0.20%) Bash
9 1 (0.20%) Ruby
9 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 146 (29.80%) Degree
2 55 (11.22%) Security Cleared
3 54 (11.02%) Master's Degree
4 37 (7.55%) SC Cleared
5 32 (6.53%) PhD
6 22 (4.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (3.47%) CISSP
8 16 (3.27%) CISM
9 14 (2.86%) Azure Certification
9 14 (2.86%) DBS Check
10 11 (2.24%) AWS Certification
11 9 (1.84%) CRISC
11 9 (1.84%) MBA
11 9 (1.84%) PMI Certification
11 9 (1.84%) PMP
12 8 (1.63%) DV Cleared
13 6 (1.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (1.22%) GSEC
14 5 (1.02%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 5 (1.02%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (4.29%) Accessibility
2 19 (3.88%) GxP
3 17 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 16 (3.27%) GRC
5 15 (3.06%) NIST
6 11 (2.24%) Data Quality
6 11 (2.24%) QA
7 8 (1.63%) EU AI Act
8 7 (1.43%) EMIR
8 7 (1.43%) JSP 440
9 6 (1.22%) Actionable Recommendations
9 6 (1.22%) GDPR
9 6 (1.22%) Government Security Classifications
9 6 (1.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 5 (1.02%) WCAG
11 3 (0.61%) SLA
12 2 (0.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.41%) NCSC
12 2 (0.41%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 6 (1.22%) Docker
2 3 (0.61%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (3.27%) Terraform
2 8 (1.63%) Kubernetes
3 5 (1.02%) Ansible
4 2 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
4 2 (0.41%) Puppet
4 2 (0.41%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.20%) Argo
5 1 (0.20%) Grafana
5 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.20%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.20%) Salt
Vendors
1 65 (13.27%) Dell
2 31 (6.33%) Databricks
3 30 (6.12%) Microsoft
4 29 (5.92%) SAP
5 26 (5.31%) Google
6 20 (4.08%) Informatica
6 20 (4.08%) Oracle
7 16 (3.27%) Denodo
7 16 (3.27%) Teradata
8 14 (2.86%) HubSpot
9 12 (2.45%) ServiceNow
10 11 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 10 (2.04%) Adobe
12 9 (1.84%) IBM
13 7 (1.43%) OpenLink
14 6 (1.22%) Cognizant
14 6 (1.22%) Workday
15 5 (1.02%) BT
16 4 (0.82%) Foundry
16 4 (0.82%) Palantir