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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 250 460
Rank change year-on-year -102 +210 -197
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 601 588 341
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.20% 0.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.70% 1.35% 0.56%
Number of salaries quoted 281 150 177
10th Percentile £50,000 £43,625 £48,250
25th Percentile £63,750 £58,750 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £80,000 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% - -
75th Percentile £111,250 £105,000 £97,500
90th Percentile £120,000 £120,500 £111,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £85,000 £65,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +30.77% -18.75% +0.46%

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 85,252 43,434 61,296
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.06% 88.68% 81.27%
Number of salaries quoted 58,899 24,470 34,327
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,500
25th Percentile £42,000 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 23 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 23 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 -100 536 £90,000 +16.13% 1,758
London -58 340 £100,000 +8.11% 1,296
UK excluding London -119 195 £85,000 +30.77% 562
Work from Home -12 145 £80,000 +23.08% 673
North of England -22 65 £90,000 +11.46% 167
Midlands -33 42 £80,000 +20.75% 67
North West -13 36 £95,000 +17.65% 107
South East -120 32 £90,000 +105.71% 119
West Midlands -29 26 £85,000 +38.78% 46
South West -68 20 £100,000 +25.00% 78
Yorkshire -30 18 £76,840 -9.60% 41
Wales -61 17 £55,000 +15.79% 16
East Midlands -18 16 £60,000 - 21
East of England - 14 £60,100 - 37
North East - 11 £100,000 - 19
Scotland +1 7 £110,000 +47.65% 58
Northern Ireland -84 1 - - 22

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 10 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
1 10 (1.66%) Palantir Foundry
2 5 (0.83%) CMS
2 5 (0.83%) Confluence
3 4 (0.67%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.50%) ArcGIS
4 3 (0.50%) SAS
5 2 (0.33%) Umbraco
5 2 (0.33%) WordPress
6 1 (0.17%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.50%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 24 (3.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.00%) Distributed Ledger
2 6 (1.00%) Oracle ERP
3 3 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.50%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.50%) SAP ERP
3 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG
3 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-BP
3 3 (0.50%) SAP MDG-F
3 3 (0.50%) Summit
4 2 (0.33%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.33%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 171 (28.45%) AWS
2 104 (17.30%) Azure
3 63 (10.48%) SaaS
4 54 (8.99%) GCP
5 34 (5.66%) Cloud Computing
6 33 (5.49%) AWS CloudFormation
7 23 (3.83%) Serverless
8 17 (2.83%) GitHub
9 16 (2.66%) Amazon Bedrock
9 16 (2.66%) Power Platform
10 13 (2.16%) Azure AI
11 10 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
12 9 (1.50%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (1.50%) PaaS
13 8 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.33%) Amazon S3
13 8 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (1.16%) LangSmith
14 7 (1.16%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.66%) Firewall
1 10 (1.66%) Internet
2 9 (1.50%) WAN
3 8 (1.33%) SD-WAN
3 8 (1.33%) Wireless
4 7 (1.16%) Broadband
4 7 (1.16%) Cisco ISE
4 7 (1.16%) Cisco Wireless
4 7 (1.16%) LAN
4 7 (1.16%) WebEx
4 7 (1.16%) WLAN
5 2 (0.33%) AMQP
5 2 (0.33%) BGP
5 2 (0.33%) MQTT
5 2 (0.33%) OSPF
5 2 (0.33%) SSL
5 2 (0.33%) VPN
6 1 (0.17%) DNS
6 1 (0.17%) Intranet
6 1 (0.17%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (5.16%) NoSQL
2 20 (3.33%) Data Mining
3 19 (3.16%) Tableau
4 17 (2.83%) Amazon QuickSight
5 14 (2.33%) Power BI
6 13 (2.16%) Metadata
7 7 (1.16%) Big Data
8 6 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
9 5 (0.83%) Geospatial Data
9 5 (0.83%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.83%) SAP HANA
10 4 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
10 4 (0.67%) BusinessObjects
10 4 (0.67%) Hadoop
10 4 (0.67%) Semantic Layer
11 3 (0.50%) Chroma
11 3 (0.50%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.50%) Metadata Repository
11 3 (0.50%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.50%) Pinecone
Development Applications
1 28 (4.66%) GitLab
2 25 (4.16%) Cucumber
3 10 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.33%) Git
5 6 (1.00%) Maven
6 5 (0.83%) JIRA
6 5 (0.83%) MLflow
7 4 (0.67%) Claude Code
8 3 (0.50%) Vite
9 2 (0.33%) Ant
9 2 (0.33%) Apache Ivy
9 2 (0.33%) Balsamiq
9 2 (0.33%) IBM UrbanCode
9 2 (0.33%) rollup.js
10 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.17%) ERwin
10 1 (0.17%) mountebank
General
1 260 (43.26%) Finance
2 210 (34.94%) Social Skills
3 156 (25.96%) Marketing
4 111 (18.47%) Public Sector
5 86 (14.31%) Analytical Skills
6 68 (11.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 57 (9.48%) Influencing Skills
8 53 (8.82%) Retail
9 49 (8.15%) Banking
10 40 (6.66%) Legal
11 38 (6.32%) Presentation Skills
12 31 (5.16%) Law
13 26 (4.33%) Brand Awareness
14 21 (3.49%) Back Office
15 18 (3.00%) Financial Institution
15 18 (3.00%) Manufacturing
16 16 (2.66%) Public Speaking
16 16 (2.66%) Telecoms
17 15 (2.50%) Aerospace
17 15 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 126 (20.97%) Architect
2 113 (18.80%) Senior
3 73 (12.15%) Lead
4 58 (9.65%) Consultant
5 45 (7.49%) Senior Manager
6 34 (5.66%) Product Manager
6 34 (5.66%) Solutions Architect
7 30 (4.99%) Senior Architect
8 26 (4.33%) Lead Architect
9 25 (4.16%) Java Engineer
10 24 (3.99%) Marketing Manager
10 24 (3.99%) Principal Engineer
10 24 (3.99%) Principal Java Engineer
11 23 (3.83%) Senior Product Manager
12 22 (3.66%) Security Architect
13 20 (3.33%) Digital Product Manager
13 20 (3.33%) Senior Digital Product Manager
14 19 (3.16%) Senior Consultant
15 18 (3.00%) Account Manager
15 18 (3.00%) Lead Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.32%) Kafka
2 26 (4.33%) Spring
2 26 (4.33%) Spring Boot
3 21 (3.49%) Terraform
4 14 (2.33%) LangChain
4 14 (2.33%) LangGraph
5 10 (1.66%) FastAPI
6 7 (1.16%) CrewAI
7 6 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.83%) Model Context Protocol
8 5 (0.83%) React
8 5 (0.83%) XML
9 4 (0.67%) Middleware
9 4 (0.67%) pgvector
9 4 (0.67%) PyTorch
9 4 (0.67%) TensorFlow
9 4 (0.67%) VML
10 3 (0.50%) CSS
10 3 (0.50%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.50%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 93 (15.47%) Cloud Native
2 66 (10.98%) Onboarding
3 47 (7.82%) Enterprise Software
4 36 (5.99%) AI Agents
4 36 (5.99%) Distributed Systems
5 33 (5.49%) Blog
6 27 (4.49%) Social Media
7 26 (4.33%) Product Ownership
7 26 (4.33%) Public Cloud
8 25 (4.16%) e-Learning
9 19 (3.16%) Web Conferencing
10 14 (2.33%) Management Information System
10 14 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (2.16%) Enterprise Cloud
12 12 (2.00%) NHS
13 10 (1.66%) Legacy Applications
14 9 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
14 9 (1.50%) Hackathon
15 8 (1.33%) Cyber Threat
15 8 (1.33%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.16%) Windows
2 6 (1.00%) Linux
3 2 (0.33%) Solaris
3 2 (0.33%) Unix
3 2 (0.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 214 (35.61%) AI
2 186 (30.95%) Mentoring
3 174 (28.95%) Roadmaps
4 164 (27.29%) Business Development
5 152 (25.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 137 (22.80%) Analytics
7 117 (19.47%) Agile
8 106 (17.64%) Decision-Making
9 85 (14.14%) Coaching
9 85 (14.14%) Continuous Improvement
10 84 (13.98%) CI/CD
11 80 (13.31%) Machine Learning
12 76 (12.65%) B2B
13 75 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
14 71 (11.81%) DevOps
14 71 (11.81%) Infrastructure as Code
14 71 (11.81%) Risk Management
15 64 (10.65%) Technical Leadership
16 57 (9.48%) Collaborative Culture
17 56 (9.32%) Strategic Thinking
Programming Languages
1 73 (12.15%) Python
2 64 (10.65%) SQL
3 39 (6.49%) Java
4 11 (1.83%) R
5 7 (1.16%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.83%) Bash
7 3 (0.50%) Go
7 3 (0.50%) TypeScript
8 2 (0.33%) ABAP
8 2 (0.33%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.33%) Bicep
8 2 (0.33%) C#
8 2 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.33%) Scala
8 2 (0.33%) SOQL
8 2 (0.33%) SOSL
9 1 (0.17%) Ruby
9 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 105 (17.47%) Degree
2 102 (16.97%) Security Cleared
3 73 (12.15%) SC Cleared
4 46 (7.65%) AWS Certification
5 27 (4.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 23 (3.83%) Master's Degree
7 17 (2.83%) CISSP
8 16 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (2.00%) CISM
10 12 (2.00%) Postgraduate
11 11 (1.83%) Azure Certification
11 11 (1.83%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 8 (1.33%) Cisco Certification
12 8 (1.33%) DV Cleared
12 8 (1.33%) MBA
13 6 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 6 (1.00%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 6 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
14 5 (0.83%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 20 (3.33%) GDPR
2 20 (3.33%) NIST
3 19 (3.16%) Data Quality
3 19 (3.16%) GRC
4 16 (2.66%) Accessibility
5 13 (2.16%) QA
5 13 (2.16%) SLA
6 12 (2.00%) PCI DSS
7 7 (1.16%) Basel III
8 6 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
9 5 (0.83%) JSP 440
10 4 (0.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.67%) PMO
11 3 (0.50%) IFRS
11 3 (0.50%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.33%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.33%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 21 (3.49%) Docker
2 6 (1.00%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 34 (5.66%) Kubernetes
2 9 (1.50%) Ansible
3 4 (0.67%) Puppet
4 3 (0.50%) Argo
4 3 (0.50%) Istio
4 3 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
4 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.50%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
5 1 (0.17%) AppManager
5 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
5 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
5 1 (0.17%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.17%) Salt
Vendors
1 62 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 40 (6.66%) SAP
3 30 (4.99%) Salesforce
4 23 (3.83%) Google
5 19 (3.16%) Oracle
6 16 (2.66%) Databricks
6 16 (2.66%) ServiceNow
7 14 (2.33%) HubSpot
8 13 (2.16%) Foundry
9 12 (2.00%) Workday
10 11 (1.83%) Cisco
10 11 (1.83%) OpenAI
11 10 (1.66%) Palantir
12 8 (1.33%) Fortinet
13 7 (1.16%) Aruba
13 7 (1.16%) Juniper
14 6 (1.00%) Cognizant
15 5 (0.83%) Informatica
15 5 (0.83%) Marketo
16 4 (0.67%) Dell