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 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 262 455
Rank change year-on-year -90 +193 -196
Permanent jobs citing Thought Leadership 586 543 309
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.49% 1.10% 0.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.67% 1.24% 0.53%
Number of salaries quoted 269 148 153
10th Percentile £52,400 £40,000 £48,750
25th Percentile £64,755 £58,750 £65,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £90,000 £78,750 £80,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% -1.56% -0.84%
75th Percentile £111,250 £106,563 £95,000
90th Percentile £117,500 £122,500 £110,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £90,000 £65,000 £80,000
% change year-on-year +38.46% -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 87,115 43,732 58,410
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.39% 88.90% 82.19%
Number of salaries quoted 59,537 24,546 31,188
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £43,997
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -91 511 £90,000 +16.13% 1,307
London -70 319 £95,000 -2.81% 913
UK excluding London -99 192 £90,000 +38.46% 456
Work from Home +7 144 £80,000 +23.08% 549
North of England -18 67 £90,000 +20.00% 167
Midlands -26 43 £90,000 +33.33% 60
North West -7 38 £95,000 +46.15% 104
South East -91 28 £105,000 +170.97% 88
West Midlands -24 26 £90,000 +38.46% 45
South West -54 23 £100,000 +56.64% 40
Yorkshire -25 18 £90,000 +5.88% 36
East Midlands -23 17 £60,000 -40.00% 15
Wales -56 16 - - 6
East of England -24 11 £60,100 +33.56% 22
North East - 11 £100,000 - 27
Scotland +2 9 £90,000 +20.81% 58
Northern Ireland -78 1 - - 18

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 6 (1.02%) Palantir Foundry
2 5 (0.85%) CMS
2 5 (0.85%) Confluence
2 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.51%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.51%) ArcGIS
3 3 (0.51%) SAS
4 2 (0.34%) Umbraco
4 2 (0.34%) WordPress
5 1 (0.17%) nginx
5 1 (0.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.51%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 24 (4.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.02%) Oracle ERP
3 5 (0.85%) Distributed Ledger
3 5 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.51%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.51%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 3 (0.51%) Summit
5 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.34%) SAP MDG-BP
5 2 (0.34%) SAP MDG-F
5 2 (0.34%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP IBP
Cloud Services
1 161 (27.47%) AWS
2 102 (17.41%) Azure
3 63 (10.75%) SaaS
4 46 (7.85%) GCP
5 35 (5.97%) AWS CloudFormation
6 32 (5.46%) Cloud Computing
7 19 (3.24%) Serverless
8 16 (2.73%) GitHub
9 15 (2.56%) Power Platform
10 14 (2.39%) Amazon Bedrock
11 11 (1.88%) Azure AI
12 10 (1.71%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (1.54%) PaaS
14 8 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.37%) Amazon S3
14 8 (1.37%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (1.19%) LangSmith
15 7 (1.19%) Microsoft 365
16 6 (1.02%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.88%) WAN
2 10 (1.71%) Internet
2 10 (1.71%) SD-WAN
2 10 (1.71%) Wireless
3 9 (1.54%) Broadband
3 9 (1.54%) Cisco ISE
3 9 (1.54%) Cisco Wireless
3 9 (1.54%) Firewall
3 9 (1.54%) LAN
3 9 (1.54%) WebEx
3 9 (1.54%) WLAN
4 2 (0.34%) AMQP
4 2 (0.34%) BGP
4 2 (0.34%) DNS
4 2 (0.34%) MQTT
4 2 (0.34%) Network Security
4 2 (0.34%) OSPF
4 2 (0.34%) VPN
5 1 (0.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
5 1 (0.17%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (5.63%) NoSQL
2 20 (3.41%) Data Mining
3 19 (3.24%) Tableau
4 17 (2.90%) Amazon QuickSight
5 16 (2.73%) Metadata
6 14 (2.39%) Power BI
7 8 (1.37%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.19%) Big Data
9 6 (1.02%) Metadata Repository
9 6 (1.02%) RDBMS
9 6 (1.02%) Star Schema
10 5 (0.85%) Data Warehouse
10 5 (0.85%) SAP HANA
11 4 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
11 4 (0.68%) BusinessObjects
11 4 (0.68%) Geospatial Data
11 4 (0.68%) Hadoop
12 3 (0.51%) MongoDB
12 3 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
12 3 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 31 (5.29%) GitLab
2 27 (4.61%) Cucumber
3 9 (1.54%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.02%) Git
4 6 (1.02%) Maven
5 5 (0.85%) JIRA
6 4 (0.68%) Claude Code
6 4 (0.68%) MLflow
7 3 (0.51%) Vite
8 2 (0.34%) Ant
8 2 (0.34%) Apache Ivy
8 2 (0.34%) Balsamiq
8 2 (0.34%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.17%) ERwin
9 1 (0.17%) mountebank
9 1 (0.17%) rollup.js
General
1 259 (44.20%) Finance
2 205 (34.98%) Social Skills
3 152 (25.94%) Marketing
4 114 (19.45%) Public Sector
5 79 (13.48%) Analytical Skills
6 68 (11.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 57 (9.73%) Influencing Skills
8 49 (8.36%) Banking
9 47 (8.02%) Legal
10 38 (6.48%) Retail
11 37 (6.31%) Law
12 32 (5.46%) Presentation Skills
13 21 (3.58%) Back Office
14 18 (3.07%) Manufacturing
15 17 (2.90%) Financial Institution
16 16 (2.73%) Brand Awareness
16 16 (2.73%) Telecoms
17 14 (2.39%) Aerospace
17 14 (2.39%) Public Speaking
18 13 (2.22%) Military
Job Titles
1 120 (20.48%) Architect
2 105 (17.92%) Senior
3 75 (12.80%) Lead
4 52 (8.87%) Consultant
5 43 (7.34%) Senior Manager
6 37 (6.31%) Product Manager
7 30 (5.12%) Solutions Architect
8 29 (4.95%) Marketing Manager
9 28 (4.78%) Senior Architect
10 27 (4.61%) Java Engineer
11 26 (4.44%) Lead Architect
11 26 (4.44%) Principal Engineer
11 26 (4.44%) Principal Java Engineer
12 23 (3.92%) Senior Product Manager
13 22 (3.75%) Security Architect
14 20 (3.41%) Digital Product Manager
14 20 (3.41%) Senior Digital Product Manager
15 19 (3.24%) Data Architect
16 18 (3.07%) Lead Security Architect
17 17 (2.90%) Enterprise Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (5.29%) Kafka
2 28 (4.78%) Spring
2 28 (4.78%) Spring Boot
3 19 (3.24%) Terraform
4 13 (2.22%) LangGraph
5 12 (2.05%) LangChain
6 10 (1.71%) FastAPI
7 6 (1.02%) CrewAI
7 6 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
8 5 (0.85%) Model Context Protocol
9 4 (0.68%) Middleware
9 4 (0.68%) React
10 3 (0.51%) CSS
10 3 (0.51%) Next.js
10 3 (0.51%) OpenACC
10 3 (0.51%) OpenMP
10 3 (0.51%) pgvector
10 3 (0.51%) PyTorch
10 3 (0.51%) REST
10 3 (0.51%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 90 (15.36%) Cloud Native
2 65 (11.09%) Onboarding
3 44 (7.51%) Enterprise Software
4 37 (6.31%) Distributed Systems
5 32 (5.46%) AI Agents
5 32 (5.46%) Blog
6 28 (4.78%) Public Cloud
7 26 (4.44%) e-Learning
7 26 (4.44%) Social Media
8 25 (4.27%) Web Conferencing
9 20 (3.41%) Product Ownership
10 16 (2.73%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (2.56%) Management Information System
12 11 (1.88%) NHS
13 9 (1.54%) Cyber Threat
13 9 (1.54%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.54%) Hackathon
13 9 (1.54%) Taxonomies
14 8 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
14 8 (1.37%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.19%) Windows
2 6 (1.02%) Linux
3 2 (0.34%) Solaris
3 2 (0.34%) Unix
3 2 (0.34%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 210 (35.84%) AI
2 177 (30.20%) Mentoring
3 168 (28.67%) Business Development
4 167 (28.50%) Roadmaps
5 165 (28.16%) Stakeholder Management
6 139 (23.72%) Analytics
7 117 (19.97%) Agile
8 100 (17.06%) Decision-Making
9 95 (16.21%) Coaching
10 80 (13.65%) CI/CD
11 79 (13.48%) Continuous Improvement
12 74 (12.63%) B2B
12 74 (12.63%) Machine Learning
13 70 (11.95%) Infrastructure as Code
14 69 (11.77%) Risk Management
15 68 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
16 64 (10.92%) Technical Leadership
17 63 (10.75%) DevOps
18 54 (9.22%) Collaborative Culture
18 54 (9.22%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 65 (11.09%) SQL
2 64 (10.92%) Python
3 37 (6.31%) Java
4 10 (1.71%) R
5 7 (1.19%) PowerShell
6 5 (0.85%) Bash
7 3 (0.51%) TypeScript
8 2 (0.34%) ABAP
8 2 (0.34%) Apex Code
8 2 (0.34%) Bicep
8 2 (0.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (0.34%) Go
8 2 (0.34%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.34%) Scala
8 2 (0.34%) SOQL
8 2 (0.34%) SOSL
9 1 (0.17%) C#
9 1 (0.17%) Ruby
9 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 109 (18.60%) Security Cleared
2 105 (17.92%) Degree
3 77 (13.14%) SC Cleared
4 48 (8.19%) AWS Certification
5 29 (4.95%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 23 (3.92%) Master's Degree
7 18 (3.07%) CISSP
8 15 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
10 13 (2.22%) CISM
11 12 (2.05%) Postgraduate
12 11 (1.88%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 8 (1.37%) Azure Certification
13 8 (1.37%) DV Cleared
13 8 (1.37%) MBA
14 7 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
15 6 (1.02%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 5 (0.85%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 5 (0.85%) CRISC
16 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (3.58%) NIST
3 20 (3.41%) Data Quality
3 20 (3.41%) GDPR
4 16 (2.73%) Accessibility
4 16 (2.73%) GRC
5 13 (2.22%) PCI DSS
6 11 (1.88%) QA
7 10 (1.71%) SLA
8 6 (1.02%) Basel III
8 6 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
9 5 (0.85%) JSP 440
10 4 (0.68%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 4 (0.68%) PMO
10 4 (0.68%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 3 (0.51%) NCSC
11 3 (0.51%) WCAG
12 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.34%) RMADS
System Software
1 19 (3.24%) Docker
2 6 (1.02%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.51%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 29 (4.95%) Kubernetes
2 7 (1.19%) Ansible
3 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (0.51%) Istio
4 3 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
5 2 (0.34%) Argo
5 2 (0.34%) Progress Chef
5 2 (0.34%) Puppet
6 1 (0.17%) Amdocs OSS
6 1 (0.17%) AppManager
6 1 (0.17%) EMC NetWorker
6 1 (0.17%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.17%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 62 (10.58%) Microsoft
2 42 (7.17%) SAP
3 24 (4.10%) Google
3 24 (4.10%) Salesforce
4 22 (3.75%) Oracle
5 16 (2.73%) Databricks
6 15 (2.56%) Workday
7 14 (2.39%) HubSpot
8 13 (2.22%) Cisco
9 11 (1.88%) ServiceNow
10 10 (1.71%) Fortinet
11 9 (1.54%) Aruba
11 9 (1.54%) Juniper
12 8 (1.37%) Foundry
12 8 (1.37%) OpenAI
13 6 (1.02%) Palantir
14 5 (0.85%) Marketo
15 4 (0.68%) Informatica
16 3 (0.51%) Apple
16 3 (0.51%) Guidewire