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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 309 261 425
Rank change year-on-year -48 +164 -169
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 611 585 589
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.20% 0.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.85% 1.33% 0.70%
Number of salaries quoted 244 163 376
10th Percentile £45,000 £45,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £56,875 £51,250
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 £103,750 £97,500
90th Percentile £117,500 £120,000 £130,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £72,500 £66,250 £70,000
% change year-on-year +9.43% -5.36% -

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 72,161 44,144 84,574
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.86% 90.58% 82.41%
Number of salaries quoted 49,802 24,628 59,539
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,500 £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 £100,000 £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 9 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 9 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 -39 556 £80,000 +1.59% 423
London -11 352 £85,000 -4.23% 306
UK excluding London -86 192 £72,500 +9.43% 148
Work from Home -9 132 £70,000 -15.15% 146
North of England -19 69 £95,000 +5.77% 35
East of England - 47 £60,100 - 8
North West +4 44 £95,000 +0.38% 17
Midlands -15 35 £80,000 +77.78% 23
South East -128 25 £37,500 -31.19% 41
West Midlands -24 19 £80,000 +77.78% 12
Yorkshire -28 18 £76,840 +2.45% 12
East Midlands -13 16 £50,000 - 11
South West -55 10 £59,750 -25.31% 13
North East -40 7 £100,000 +71.67% 6
Scotland -5 3 £110,000 +15.79% 17
Wales - 3 £55,000 - 4

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 86 (14.08%) Azure
3 63 (10.31%) 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 19 (3.11%) 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%) LoRaWAN
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%) Redis
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
1 205 (33.55%) Finance
2 165 (27.00%) Social Skills
3 108 (17.68%) Marketing
4 99 (16.20%) Analytical Skills
5 96 (15.71%) Public Sector
6 62 (10.15%) Presentation Skills
7 59 (9.66%) Retail
8 44 (7.20%) Banking
9 41 (6.71%) Legal
10 35 (5.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 33 (5.40%) Influencing Skills
12 20 (3.27%) Financial Institution
13 19 (3.11%) Brand Awareness
14 15 (2.45%) Telecoms
15 14 (2.29%) Manufacturing
16 13 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
17 12 (1.96%) Law
18 11 (1.80%) Aerospace
19 10 (1.64%) Public Speaking
20 8 (1.31%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 153 (25.04%) Senior
2 103 (16.86%) Architect
3 80 (13.09%) Consultant
4 74 (12.11%) 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%) Java Engineer
16 23 (3.76%) Product Manager
17 22 (3.60%) Lead Architect
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 61 (9.98%) Cloud Native
2 46 (7.53%) Enterprise Software
3 42 (6.87%) 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
9 17 (2.78%) Product Ownership
9 17 (2.78%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (2.29%) Web Conferencing
11 13 (2.13%) Life Science
11 13 (2.13%) Social Media
12 12 (1.96%) Legacy Applications
12 12 (1.96%) NHS
13 11 (1.80%) Data Fabric
13 11 (1.80%) Greenfield Project
14 10 (1.64%) Enterprise Cloud
14 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
1 199 (32.57%) AI
2 180 (29.46%) Business Development
3 164 (26.84%) Mentoring
4 162 (26.51%) Decision-Making
5 143 (23.40%) Roadmaps
6 141 (23.08%) Analytics
7 101 (16.53%) Agile
8 79 (12.93%) Stakeholder Management
9 75 (12.27%) Problem-Solving
10 73 (11.95%) DevOps
11 71 (11.62%) B2B
12 70 (11.46%) Business Strategy
13 68 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
14 64 (10.47%) CI/CD
14 64 (10.47%) Strategic Thinking
15 63 (10.31%) Cybersecurity
16 62 (10.15%) Workshop Facilitation
17 60 (9.82%) Machine Learning
18 57 (9.33%) Coaching
19 54 (8.84%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 45 (7.36%) Java
1 45 (7.36%) Python
2 32 (5.24%) SQL
3 9 (1.47%) R
4 4 (0.65%) Go
4 4 (0.65%) PowerShell
5 3 (0.49%) Bash
5 3 (0.49%) C#
5 3 (0.49%) Kotlin
6 2 (0.33%) ABAP
6 2 (0.33%) Bicep
7 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
7 1 (0.16%) PHP
7 1 (0.16%) Scala
Qualifications
1 161 (26.35%) 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 21 (3.44%) 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%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (5.89%) GRC
2 29 (4.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (3.60%) NIST
4 18 (2.95%) GDPR
5 14 (2.29%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.29%) Data Quality
5 14 (2.29%) JSP 440
6 11 (1.80%) PCI DSS
7 10 (1.64%) QA
8 9 (1.47%) EU AI Act
8 9 (1.47%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 9 (1.47%) SLA
9 8 (1.31%) Basel III
10 7 (1.15%) Government Security Classifications
11 5 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.49%) IFRS
12 3 (0.49%) PMO
13 2 (0.33%) GAAP
13 2 (0.33%) GxP
13 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 57 (9.33%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.22%) SAP
4 33 (5.40%) Databricks
5 25 (4.09%) Informatica
5 25 (4.09%) Teradata
6 24 (3.93%) Denodo
7 23 (3.76%) Salesforce
8 22 (3.60%) ServiceNow
9 19 (3.11%) Google
10 15 (2.45%) Foundry
11 14 (2.29%) Palantir
12 13 (2.13%) HubSpot
13 7 (1.15%) Cisco
13 7 (1.15%) Oracle
14 6 (0.98%) Aruba
14 6 (0.98%) Cognizant
14 6 (0.98%) Fortinet
14 6 (0.98%) Juniper
14 6 (0.98%) OpenAI