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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 286 300 331
Rank change year-on-year +14 +31 -87
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 526 399 746
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.98% 0.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.88% 1.05% 0.97%
Number of salaries quoted 186 126 491
10th Percentile £43,875 £48,750 £42,500
25th Percentile £61,250 £70,697 £61,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £80,000 £87,991 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year -9.08% +9.99% -11.11%
75th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £100,064
90th Percentile £118,750 £130,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £88,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year -20.45% +10.00% +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 59,873 37,939 76,774
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 77.17% 93.46% 86.66%
Number of salaries quoted 36,505 22,139 57,454
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £29,079
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £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 £77,500 £80,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £97,500 £102,410 £93,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +10.00% -8.41%

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 27 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 27 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 +24 458 £80,000 -8.57% 403
London +60 298 £86,500 -3.89% 243
UK excluding London -58 166 £70,000 -20.45% 286
Work from Home -6 98 £80,000 -10.10% 124
East of England +17 47 £65,050 -33.11% 9
North of England -58 45 £80,000 -15.47% 54
South East -73 38 £62,500 -10.71% 157
North West -28 37 £77,500 -18.11% 26
Scotland -31 14 £80,000 -20.00% 11
South West -29 10 £47,000 -41.25% 22
Midlands -34 10 £75,000 - 30
West Midlands -17 6 £75,000 - 25
Yorkshire -58 6 £90,000 +20.00% 21
East Midlands - 4 £50,000 - 5
North East -30 2 - - 8
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 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
2 6 (1.14%) IIS
2 6 (1.14%) Palantir Foundry
3 5 (0.95%) CMS
3 5 (0.95%) WordPress
4 3 (0.57%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.57%) Confluence
5 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
6 1 (0.19%) Apache
6 1 (0.19%) Drupal
6 1 (0.19%) nginx
Applications
1 14 (2.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.95%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 5 (0.95%) Adobe XD
3 5 (0.95%) InVision
3 5 (0.95%) Maya
3 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.95%) Sketch
4 3 (0.57%) Adobe Illustrator
4 3 (0.57%) Elementor
4 3 (0.57%) Photoshop
5 2 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.19%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.19%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (2.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.95%) Endur
4 4 (0.76%) SAP MDG
5 3 (0.57%) Elite 3E
6 2 (0.38%) SAP SCM
6 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.19%) Magento
7 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.19%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.19%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.19%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.19%) SAP IBP
7 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG-F
7 1 (0.19%) SAP PLM
7 1 (0.19%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 81 (15.40%) AWS
2 59 (11.22%) Azure
3 46 (8.75%) SaaS
3 46 (8.75%) Snowflake
4 37 (7.03%) GCP
5 11 (2.09%) Power Platform
6 10 (1.90%) GitHub
7 9 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (1.71%) Dynamics 365
8 7 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
8 7 (1.33%) Cloud Computing
9 6 (1.14%) dbt
9 6 (1.14%) Matillion
9 6 (1.14%) OCI
9 6 (1.14%) SuccessFactors
10 5 (0.95%) Figma
10 5 (0.95%) Google Ads
10 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Copilot
10 5 (0.95%) Serverless
11 4 (0.76%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.28%) Firewall
2 7 (1.33%) Intrusion Detection
2 7 (1.33%) Network Security
3 4 (0.76%) SD-WAN
3 4 (0.76%) WAN
3 4 (0.76%) Wireless
4 3 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
4 3 (0.57%) WebEx
4 3 (0.57%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.38%) Broadband
5 2 (0.38%) Cisco IPT
5 2 (0.38%) LAN
5 2 (0.38%) Tactical Data Link
6 1 (0.19%) Bluetooth
6 1 (0.19%) Cisco Wireless
6 1 (0.19%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.19%) SSL
6 1 (0.19%) WLAN
6 1 (0.19%) ZigBee
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (7.79%) Data Warehouse
2 31 (5.89%) Data Lake
3 12 (2.28%) NoSQL
4 11 (2.09%) Tableau
5 10 (1.90%) Power BI
6 9 (1.71%) Big Data
6 9 (1.71%) Metadata
7 6 (1.14%) BigQuery
7 6 (1.14%) Hadoop
8 5 (0.95%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.76%) DataStage
9 4 (0.76%) QlikView
9 4 (0.76%) SAP HANA
10 3 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.38%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.38%) Looker
11 2 (0.38%) SAP Data Services
11 2 (0.38%) SQL Server
12 1 (0.19%) MongoDB
12 1 (0.19%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (1.14%) GitLab
2 5 (0.95%) Axure RP
2 5 (0.95%) Cucumber
2 5 (0.95%) MLflow
3 4 (0.76%) ER Studio
3 4 (0.76%) ERwin
3 4 (0.76%) JIRA
3 4 (0.76%) PowerDesigner
4 2 (0.38%) Git
4 2 (0.38%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.19%) Cypress.io
5 1 (0.19%) Gatling
5 1 (0.19%) JMeter
5 1 (0.19%) Selenium
5 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.19%) Vagrant
General
1 184 (34.98%) Finance
2 122 (23.19%) Social Skills
3 87 (16.54%) Analytical Skills
4 85 (16.16%) Marketing
5 64 (12.17%) Presentation Skills
6 62 (11.79%) Public Sector
7 47 (8.94%) Retail
8 38 (7.22%) Legal
9 35 (6.65%) Law
10 31 (5.89%) Banking
11 29 (5.51%) Influencing Skills
12 26 (4.94%) Pharmaceutical
13 23 (4.37%) Games
13 23 (4.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 20 (3.80%) Financial Institution
15 14 (2.66%) Aerospace
16 10 (1.90%) Publishing
17 9 (1.71%) Telecoms
18 8 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
19 7 (1.33%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 122 (23.19%) Senior
2 75 (14.26%) Architect
3 73 (13.88%) Consultant
4 70 (13.31%) Lead
5 63 (11.98%) Sales Executive
6 59 (11.22%) Account Executive
7 45 (8.56%) Senior Sales Executive
8 38 (7.22%) Business Development Executive
9 33 (6.27%) Business Sales Executive
9 33 (6.27%) Sales Account Executive
9 33 (6.27%) Senior Account Executive
10 26 (4.94%) Business Architect
10 26 (4.94%) Product Specialist
11 24 (4.56%) Data Management Specialist
11 24 (4.56%) Senior Manager
12 22 (4.18%) Senior Architect
13 21 (3.99%) Business Consultant
13 21 (3.99%) Senior Consultant
14 19 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
15 18 (3.42%) Business Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (2.09%) Spring
1 11 (2.09%) Spring Boot
2 10 (1.90%) Kafka
3 7 (1.33%) CSS
3 7 (1.33%) HTML
4 6 (1.14%) REST
4 6 (1.14%) SOAP
5 5 (0.95%) OAuth
5 5 (0.95%) OAuth2
5 5 (0.95%) Play Framework
5 5 (0.95%) PyTorch
5 5 (0.95%) TensorFlow
6 4 (0.76%) React
7 3 (0.57%) Flutter
7 3 (0.57%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.38%) Hugging Face
8 2 (0.38%) LangChain
8 2 (0.38%) PySpark
8 2 (0.38%) SAP Fiori
8 2 (0.38%) XGBoost
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.27%) Life Science
2 30 (5.70%) Blog
3 28 (5.32%) Self-Motivation
4 26 (4.94%) Cloud Native
5 24 (4.56%) Enterprise Software
6 16 (3.04%) Management Information System
7 15 (2.85%) Algorithms
7 15 (2.85%) Social Media
8 13 (2.47%) Onboarding
8 13 (2.47%) Web Conferencing
9 12 (2.28%) AI Agents
9 12 (2.28%) e-Learning
10 11 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
11 10 (1.90%) Podcast
12 8 (1.52%) Data Fabric
12 8 (1.52%) Product Ownership
12 8 (1.52%) Security Posture
12 8 (1.52%) Virtual Team
13 7 (1.33%) NHS
14 6 (1.14%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 3 (0.57%) Windows
2 2 (0.38%) Linux
3 1 (0.19%) Android
3 1 (0.19%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.19%) VMS
3 1 (0.19%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (35.74%) AI
2 164 (31.18%) Decision-Making
3 157 (29.85%) Business Development
4 140 (26.62%) Analytics
5 107 (20.34%) Roadmaps
6 100 (19.01%) Agile
7 98 (18.63%) Mentoring
8 80 (15.21%) Business Strategy
9 70 (13.31%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (12.74%) Workshop Facilitation
11 63 (11.98%) Data Science
11 63 (11.98%) Stakeholder Management
12 62 (11.79%) Cybersecurity
12 62 (11.79%) Use Case
13 60 (11.41%) Generative AI
13 60 (11.41%) Strategic Thinking
14 59 (11.22%) B2B
15 54 (10.27%) Machine Learning
15 54 (10.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 52 (9.89%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 35 (6.65%) Python
2 30 (5.70%) Java
3 22 (4.18%) SQL
4 6 (1.14%) JavaScript
4 6 (1.14%) R
5 5 (0.95%) Kotlin
5 5 (0.95%) Scala
6 4 (0.76%) C#
7 3 (0.57%) Go
7 3 (0.57%) PowerShell
8 1 (0.19%) ABAP
8 1 (0.19%) Bash
8 1 (0.19%) PHP
8 1 (0.19%) Ruby
8 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 169 (32.13%) Degree
2 60 (11.41%) Security Cleared
3 51 (9.70%) Master's Degree
4 39 (7.41%) SC Cleared
5 30 (5.70%) PhD
6 19 (3.61%) CISSP
6 19 (3.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 18 (3.42%) CISM
8 15 (2.85%) Azure Certification
9 14 (2.66%) DBS Check
10 12 (2.28%) AWS Certification
11 10 (1.90%) CRISC
11 10 (1.90%) DV Cleared
12 9 (1.71%) MBA
13 7 (1.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.33%) GSEC
13 7 (1.33%) PMI Certification
13 7 (1.33%) PMP
14 6 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 6 (1.14%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.37%) Accessibility
2 19 (3.61%) GRC
2 19 (3.61%) GxP
2 19 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 17 (3.23%) NIST
4 14 (2.66%) Data Quality
5 11 (2.09%) QA
6 9 (1.71%) EU AI Act
6 9 (1.71%) JSP 440
7 8 (1.52%) GDPR
8 7 (1.33%) Government Security Classifications
8 7 (1.33%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 6 (1.14%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.95%) EMIR
10 5 (0.95%) WCAG
11 3 (0.57%) NCSC
11 3 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.57%) SLA
12 2 (0.38%) IFRS
12 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
System Software
1 7 (1.33%) Docker
2 4 (0.76%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 16 (3.04%) Terraform
2 8 (1.52%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.33%) Ansible
4 4 (0.76%) Puppet
5 2 (0.38%) Argo
5 2 (0.38%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 2 (0.38%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.38%) RSA Archer
5 2 (0.38%) Salt
6 1 (0.19%) Consul
6 1 (0.19%) Grafana
6 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.19%) Packer
Vendors
1 96 (18.25%) Dell
2 39 (7.41%) Databricks
3 31 (5.89%) Microsoft
3 31 (5.89%) SAP
4 29 (5.51%) Informatica
5 28 (5.32%) Google
6 24 (4.56%) Denodo
6 24 (4.56%) Teradata
7 19 (3.61%) Oracle
8 13 (2.47%) HubSpot
8 13 (2.47%) ServiceNow
9 11 (2.09%) Salesforce
10 10 (1.90%) Adobe
11 9 (1.71%) IBM
12 6 (1.14%) Cognizant
12 6 (1.14%) Foundry
12 6 (1.14%) Palantir
12 6 (1.14%) Workday
13 5 (0.95%) BT
13 5 (0.95%) OpenLink