Sarbanes-Oxley Contract Job Trends

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX, Sarbox)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Sarbanes-Oxley skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 450 380 531
Rank change year-on-year -70 +151 -48
Contract jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley 185 158 63
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.53% 0.14%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.18% 3.26% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 89 43
10th Percentile £450 £406 £370
25th Percentile £500 £513 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -4.17% +20.00%
75th Percentile £613 £688 £675
90th Percentile £738 £755 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £561 £544 £560
% change year-on-year +3.22% -2.90% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 1
10th Percentile £50.00 - -
25th Percentile £55.63 £21.50 £67.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £82.50 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.24% +17.86% +76.77%
75th Percentile £76.50 £92.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £81.20 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £23.00 £70.00
% change year-on-year +170.65% -67.14% +76.77%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

Sarbanes-Oxley falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 8,486 4,853 6,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.79% 16.27% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,447 3,101 3,735
10th Percentile £340 £275 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £509
Median % change year-on-year - -1.67% -3.14%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 200 435
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.77 £19.87 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.76 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.57% +38.09% -38.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £85.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £31.88 £18.97
% change year-on-year +25.47% +68.05% -49.41%

Sarbanes-Oxley
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Sarbanes-Oxley relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Sarbanes-Oxley job vacancy trend in the UK

Sarbanes-Oxley
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Sarbanes-Oxley.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Sarbanes-Oxley

Sarbanes-Oxley
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley over the 6 months to 19 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Sarbanes-Oxley in the UK

Sarbanes-Oxley
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Sarbanes-Oxley.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Sarbanes-Oxley

Sarbanes-Oxley
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley over the 6 months to 19 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Sarbanes-Oxley in the UK

Sarbanes-Oxley
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley within the UK over the 6 months to 19 June 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -86 162 £598 +3.37% 28
London -42 97 £600 -8.05% 15
UK excluding London -103 63 £561 +3.22% 16
Work from Home -34 60 £600 +9.09% 13
North of England -65 24 £580 +7.21% 3
North West -27 20 £631 +5.17% 1
South East -62 15 £475 -11.63% 8
Midlands -52 11 £600 +6.38% 1
East of England -24 8 £535 -6.96% 4
West Midlands -56 8 £650 +7.79% 1
Scotland -10 4 - -
Yorkshire -65 4 £428 -13.20% 2
East Midlands -16 3 £550 +24.29%
South West -28 1 £600 +11.63%

Sarbanes-Oxley
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 7 (3.78%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.70%) Apache
2 5 (2.70%) IIS
3 3 (1.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 3 (1.62%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.08%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.54%) Confluence
5 1 (0.54%) IBM HTTP Server
5 1 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.54%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 16 (8.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 25 (13.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (4.32%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 5 (2.70%) NetSuite
3 5 (2.70%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 4 (2.16%) HFM
4 4 (2.16%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (1.62%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle FAH
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.54%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.54%) SAP CO
7 1 (0.54%) SAP CS
7 1 (0.54%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.54%) SAP FI/CO
7 1 (0.54%) SAP GRC
7 1 (0.54%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.54%) SAP LE
7 1 (0.54%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 69 (37.30%) Azure
2 49 (26.49%) AWS
3 28 (15.14%) Entra ID
4 16 (8.65%) Power Platform
5 12 (6.49%) SaaS
6 10 (5.41%) Azure DevOps
7 9 (4.86%) GCP
8 7 (3.78%) Snowflake
9 6 (3.24%) Microsoft 365
10 5 (2.70%) IaaS
11 4 (2.16%) Azure Machine Learning
11 4 (2.16%) OCI
12 3 (1.62%) PaaS
13 2 (1.08%) Cloud Computing
13 2 (1.08%) Matillion
13 2 (1.08%) Microsoft Purview
13 2 (1.08%) SuccessFactors
13 2 (1.08%) Veeva
14 1 (0.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 1 (0.54%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 14 (7.57%) DNS
2 13 (7.03%) DHCP
2 13 (7.03%) Kerberos
3 7 (3.78%) HTTP
3 7 (3.78%) Network Security
4 5 (2.70%) HTTPS
5 4 (2.16%) Firewall
6 1 (0.54%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.54%) LAN
6 1 (0.54%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.54%) WAN
6 1 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (8.65%) Power BI
2 11 (5.95%) Relational Database
3 9 (4.86%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.78%) NoSQL
5 5 (2.70%) Data Lake
5 5 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.70%) Spark SQL
6 4 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (2.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (1.62%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.62%) RDBMS
8 2 (1.08%) Big Data
8 2 (1.08%) GIS
8 2 (1.08%) Snowflake Schema
9 1 (0.54%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.54%) Delta Lake
9 1 (0.54%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.54%) Spotfire
9 1 (0.54%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 10 (5.41%) Git
2 7 (3.78%) GitLab
2 7 (3.78%) JIRA
3 2 (1.08%) ER Studio
3 2 (1.08%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.08%) Postman
3 2 (1.08%) Robot Framework
3 2 (1.08%) Selenium
4 1 (0.54%) Artifactory
4 1 (0.54%) Gradle
4 1 (0.54%) Introscope
4 1 (0.54%) Maven
4 1 (0.54%) SonarQube
General
1 107 (57.84%) Finance
2 76 (41.08%) Social Skills
3 36 (19.46%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (12.43%) Legal
5 19 (10.27%) Banking
6 14 (7.57%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (4.86%) Pharmaceutical
8 8 (4.32%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (3.78%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (2.70%) Billing
10 5 (2.70%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.62%) Public Sector
12 2 (1.08%) Japanese Language
12 2 (1.08%) Retail
13 1 (0.54%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.54%) French Language
13 1 (0.54%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.54%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 35 (18.92%) Lead
2 24 (12.97%) Analyst
2 24 (12.97%) Architect
3 16 (8.65%) Consultant
4 13 (7.03%) Business Analyst
5 10 (5.41%) SOX Analyst
6 9 (4.86%) Finance Business Analyst
6 9 (4.86%) Financial Analyst
7 8 (4.32%) IT Analyst
7 8 (4.32%) Senior
8 7 (3.78%) Information Officer
8 7 (3.78%) Information Security Officer
8 7 (3.78%) Java Engineer
8 7 (3.78%) Project Manager
8 7 (3.78%) Security Officer
9 6 (3.24%) Data Engineer
10 5 (2.70%) Business Finance Analyst
10 5 (2.70%) Data Architect
10 5 (2.70%) Security Consultant
10 5 (2.70%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (12.43%) LDAP
2 19 (10.27%) OAuth
2 19 (10.27%) SAML
3 14 (7.57%) REST
4 8 (4.32%) Oracle Fusion
4 8 (4.32%) SailPoint
5 7 (3.78%) SOAP
5 7 (3.78%) Spring
5 7 (3.78%) Spring Boot
6 6 (3.24%) JDBC
6 6 (3.24%) Middleware
6 6 (3.24%) OpenID
7 5 (2.70%) AWS CDK
7 5 (2.70%) J2EE
7 5 (2.70%) JSON
8 4 (2.16%) Node.js
8 4 (2.16%) PySpark
8 4 (2.16%) Spark Streaming
9 2 (1.08%) EDI
9 2 (1.08%) XML Messaging
Miscellaneous
1 18 (9.73%) Replication
2 13 (7.03%) Management Information System
3 12 (6.49%) Cloud Native
4 8 (4.32%) Onboarding
4 8 (4.32%) Product Ownership
5 7 (3.78%) BYOD
6 6 (3.24%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (3.24%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (2.70%) Reinsurance
8 4 (2.16%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (2.16%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.62%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.62%) CMDB
9 3 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.62%) Greenfield Project
9 3 (1.62%) Operational Technology
10 2 (1.08%) Augmented Reality
10 2 (1.08%) Data Centre
10 2 (1.08%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 32 (17.30%) Windows
2 14 (7.57%) Windows Server
3 11 (5.95%) Linux
4 4 (2.16%) Unix
5 1 (0.54%) AIX
5 1 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (30.27%) Stakeholder Management
2 54 (29.19%) Agile
3 35 (18.92%) Identity Access Management
4 34 (18.38%) RBAC
5 32 (17.30%) DevOps
6 31 (16.76%) ERP
7 30 (16.22%) Change Management
7 30 (16.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 29 (15.68%) Migration
9 28 (15.14%) Procure-to-Pay
10 25 (13.51%) Problem-Solving
11 24 (12.97%) AI
12 23 (12.43%) Information Security
13 22 (11.89%) Cybersecurity
13 22 (11.89%) ETL
14 21 (11.35%) CI/CD
15 19 (10.27%) Order to Cash
15 19 (10.27%) Roadmaps
16 17 (9.19%) Record to Report
16 17 (9.19%) Waterfall
Programming Languages
1 30 (16.22%) SQL
2 25 (13.51%) Python
3 24 (12.97%) PowerShell
4 23 (12.43%) Java
5 4 (2.16%) Bash
5 4 (2.16%) TypeScript
6 2 (1.08%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.08%) PL/SQL
7 1 (0.54%) Jython
7 1 (0.54%) R
7 1 (0.54%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 29 (15.68%) Degree
2 20 (10.81%) CISSP
3 17 (9.19%) Security Cleared
4 16 (8.65%) ACCA
5 15 (8.11%) CISM
6 14 (7.57%) PMI Certification
6 14 (7.57%) PMP
6 14 (7.57%) SC Cleared
7 11 (5.95%) CIMA
8 7 (3.78%) CISA
9 4 (2.16%) CRISC
9 4 (2.16%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (1.62%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.62%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 2 (1.08%) ISTQB
11 2 (1.08%) Master's Degree
11 2 (1.08%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 1 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (41.62%) GDPR
2 41 (22.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (12.97%) NIST
4 22 (11.89%) PCI DSS
5 16 (8.65%) GAAP
5 16 (8.65%) HIPAA
5 16 (8.65%) IFRS
6 13 (7.03%) ITGC
7 11 (5.95%) Data Quality
8 10 (5.41%) GRC
9 7 (3.78%) COBIT
10 5 (2.70%) Basel III
10 5 (2.70%) Solvency II
11 4 (2.16%) QA
12 3 (1.62%) IFRS 9
12 3 (1.62%) NIST 800
12 3 (1.62%) PMO
12 3 (1.62%) SLA
13 2 (1.08%) GxP
13 2 (1.08%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 30 (16.22%) Active Directory
2 8 (4.32%) Docker
Systems Management
1 21 (11.35%) Single Sign-On
2 14 (7.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 13 (7.03%) Kubernetes
4 2 (1.08%) Control-M
5 1 (0.54%) CA Wily
5 1 (0.54%) Puppet
5 1 (0.54%) RSA Archer
5 1 (0.54%) Terraform
Vendors
1 57 (30.81%) SAP
2 39 (21.08%) Microsoft
3 21 (11.35%) ServiceNow
4 19 (10.27%) Oracle
5 17 (9.19%) Workday
6 16 (8.65%) Okta
7 10 (5.41%) CyberArk
8 6 (3.24%) Ariba
9 5 (2.70%) Databricks
10 4 (2.16%) Hyperion
10 4 (2.16%) Informatica
10 4 (2.16%) Salesforce
10 4 (2.16%) Tagetik
11 3 (1.62%) Alteryx
11 3 (1.62%) Bloomberg
11 3 (1.62%) Refinitiv
12 2 (1.08%) Centrify
12 2 (1.08%) Google
12 2 (1.08%) OpenText
13 1 (0.54%) CrowdStrike