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

 6 months to
13 Mar 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 432 404 527
Rank change year-on-year -28 +123 +21
Contract jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley 182 129 69
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.44% 0.15%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.45% 2.89% 1.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 77 42
10th Percentile £450 £313 £453
25th Percentile £500 £425 £503
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £600
90th Percentile £765 £800 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £543 £550 £540
% change year-on-year -1.36% +1.85% +13.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 1 2
10th Percentile £31.40 - £34.88
25th Percentile £44.00 - £40.31
Median hourly rate £54.50 £95.00 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year -42.63% +85.37% +26.54%
75th Percentile £58.25 - £62.81
90th Percentile £60.50 - £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 - £70.00

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 7,426 4,471 6,455
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.34% 15.17% 14.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,782 2,834 4,121
10th Percentile £331 £260 £300
25th Percentile £413 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £480
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.04% +1.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 170 389
10th Percentile £15.46 £16.25 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.48 £22.04 £14.00
Median hourly rate £27.94 £31.88 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.36% +30.12% -34.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £46.75
90th Percentile £79.93 £79.13 £67.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.58 £32.00 £22.30
% change year-on-year -4.44% +43.50% -31.38%

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 13 March 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 13 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Sarbanes-Oxley in the UK

Sarbanes-Oxley
Top 15 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 13 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
Contract
IT Job Ads		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
England -38 159 £563 +2.09% 41
London -10 106 £600 +9.09% 22
Work from Home +1 59 £600 +9.09% 17
UK excluding London -81 52 £543 -1.36% 26
South East -44 16 £525 +23.53% 14
Midlands -62 10 £563 -6.25% 7
West Midlands -57 8 £600 +33.33% 5
South West -19 7 £512 -7.00%
East of England -21 7 £600 +6.67% 1
North of England -66 6 £550 +33.33% 3
Scotland -2 5 £612 +1.92% 1
North West -32 4 £600 +23.08% 3
East Midlands -34 2 £525 -12.50% 2
Yorkshire -59 2 £500 +21.21%
Northern Ireland - 2 £550 -

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 (3.85%) Confluence
2 4 (2.20%) Apache
3 3 (1.65%) Apache Spark
3 3 (1.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 3 (1.65%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.10%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.55%) IBM HTTP Server
5 1 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.55%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 11 (6.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (3.30%) MS Visio
3 5 (2.75%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 14 (7.69%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (2.75%) Oracle General Ledger
2 5 (2.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 5 (2.75%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 4 (2.20%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (2.20%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (1.65%) NetSuite
4 3 (1.65%) SAP GRC
5 2 (1.10%) OpenText VIM for SAP
5 2 (1.10%) Oracle FAH
5 2 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (1.10%) SAP GTS
6 1 (0.55%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.55%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.55%) SAP IBP
6 1 (0.55%) SAP LE
6 1 (0.55%) SAP MM
6 1 (0.55%) SAP PP
6 1 (0.55%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.55%) SAP SRM
Cloud Services
1 60 (32.97%) Azure
2 26 (14.29%) Entra ID
3 24 (13.19%) AWS
4 15 (8.24%) Power Platform
5 14 (7.69%) OCI
6 7 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (3.30%) SaaS
8 5 (2.75%) IaaS
8 5 (2.75%) Lucidchart
9 4 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
9 4 (2.20%) Snowflake
10 3 (1.65%) Azure Machine Learning
10 3 (1.65%) SuccessFactors
11 2 (1.10%) Azure Data Factory
11 2 (1.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 2 (1.10%) GCP
11 2 (1.10%) PaaS
11 2 (1.10%) Veeva
12 1 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
12 1 (0.55%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 17 (9.34%) DNS
2 16 (8.79%) DHCP
3 15 (8.24%) Kerberos
4 12 (6.59%) HTTP
5 10 (5.49%) Network Security
6 7 (3.85%) Firewall
7 4 (2.20%) SSL
7 4 (2.20%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.55%) LAN
8 1 (0.55%) SD-WAN
8 1 (0.55%) WAN
8 1 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (8.24%) Power BI
2 8 (4.40%) SQL Server
3 7 (3.85%) Data Lake
3 7 (3.85%) Relational Database
3 7 (3.85%) Spark SQL
4 5 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (1.65%) Big Data
6 3 (1.65%) NoSQL
6 3 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (0.55%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.55%) SAP BW
8 1 (0.55%) SAP HANA
8 1 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.55%) Spotfire
Development Applications
1 14 (7.69%) Git
1 14 (7.69%) GitLab
2 11 (6.04%) JIRA
3 6 (3.30%) Jenkins
4 4 (2.20%) Selenium
5 3 (1.65%) Postman
5 3 (1.65%) REST Assured
5 3 (1.65%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.55%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.55%) Introscope
General
1 110 (60.44%) Finance
2 78 (42.86%) Social Skills
3 39 (21.43%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (15.93%) Banking
5 11 (6.04%) Documentation Skills
5 11 (6.04%) Legal
6 10 (5.49%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (4.40%) General Ledger
7 8 (4.40%) Investment Banking
7 8 (4.40%) Manufacturing
8 6 (3.30%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (2.75%) Financial Institution
10 4 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (2.20%) Public Sector
10 4 (2.20%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.65%) Billing
11 3 (1.65%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (1.10%) Japanese Language
12 2 (1.10%) Marketing
12 2 (1.10%) Retail
Job Titles
1 28 (15.38%) Analyst
2 20 (10.99%) Consultant
2 20 (10.99%) Lead
3 14 (7.69%) Architect
4 13 (7.14%) Senior
5 10 (5.49%) Business Analyst
5 10 (5.49%) Developer
6 9 (4.95%) Programme Manager
7 8 (4.40%) Project Manager
7 8 (4.40%) Security Analyst
8 6 (3.30%) Information Officer
8 6 (3.30%) Information Security Officer
8 6 (3.30%) Security Officer
9 5 (2.75%) ForgeRock Developer
9 5 (2.75%) QA Engineer
9 5 (2.75%) Technical Leader
9 5 (2.75%) Technical Writer
10 4 (2.20%) Change Manager
10 4 (2.20%) IT Change Manager
10 4 (2.20%) IT Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (12.64%) OAuth
1 23 (12.64%) SAML
2 21 (11.54%) LDAP
3 7 (3.85%) Oracle Fusion
3 7 (3.85%) PySpark
3 7 (3.85%) Spark Streaming
4 6 (3.30%) Middleware
4 6 (3.30%) OpenID
4 6 (3.30%) SailPoint
5 5 (2.75%) OAuth2
5 5 (2.75%) RESTful
6 4 (2.20%) SAP Fiori
7 3 (1.65%) AWS CDK
7 3 (1.65%) CSS
7 3 (1.65%) Node.js
7 3 (1.65%) pytest
7 3 (1.65%) REST
7 3 (1.65%) Spring
7 3 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 3 (1.65%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (8.24%) Replication
2 11 (6.04%) Management Information System
3 8 (4.40%) Analytical Mindset
3 8 (4.40%) BYOD
3 8 (4.40%) Onboarding
4 7 (3.85%) Distributed Computing
5 5 (2.75%) PMI
6 4 (2.20%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 3 (1.65%) Cloud Native
7 3 (1.65%) CMDB
7 3 (1.65%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.65%) Product Ownership
8 2 (1.10%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.10%) Fixed Income
8 2 (1.10%) Hedge funds
8 2 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.10%) Mainframe
8 2 (1.10%) Taxonomies
9 1 (0.55%) Derivative
9 1 (0.55%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 26 (14.29%) Windows
2 15 (8.24%) Windows Server
3 9 (4.95%) Linux
4 2 (1.10%) zOS
5 1 (0.55%) AIX
5 1 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.55%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (30.22%) Stakeholder Management
2 49 (26.92%) Agile
3 33 (18.13%) Continuous Improvement
3 33 (18.13%) Identity Access Management
4 31 (17.03%) RBAC
5 29 (15.93%) ERP
6 27 (14.84%) DevOps
7 26 (14.29%) CI/CD
8 24 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (13.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 23 (12.64%) Change Management
9 23 (12.64%) Risk Management
10 21 (11.54%) Waterfall
11 19 (10.44%) Cybersecurity
11 19 (10.44%) ETL
12 18 (9.89%) Information Security
12 18 (9.89%) ITIL
13 17 (9.34%) Business Intelligence
13 17 (9.34%) Disaster Recovery
13 17 (9.34%) Procure-to-Pay
Programming Languages
1 32 (17.58%) SQL
2 30 (16.48%) PowerShell
2 30 (16.48%) Python
3 19 (10.44%) Java
4 3 (1.65%) C#
4 3 (1.65%) JavaScript
4 3 (1.65%) TypeScript
5 2 (1.10%) CLIST
5 2 (1.10%) JCL
5 2 (1.10%) PL/SQL
5 2 (1.10%) REXX
6 1 (0.55%) Bash
6 1 (0.55%) BeanShell
6 1 (0.55%) Jython
6 1 (0.55%) R
6 1 (0.55%) Shell Script
6 1 (0.55%) VB
Qualifications
1 33 (18.13%) Degree
2 20 (10.99%) Security Cleared
3 19 (10.44%) SC Cleared
4 17 (9.34%) CISSP
5 14 (7.69%) PMI Certification
6 13 (7.14%) CISM
7 10 (5.49%) PMP
8 6 (3.30%) ACCA
8 6 (3.30%) CISA
9 5 (2.75%) CIMA
10 4 (2.20%) ITIL Certification
10 4 (2.20%) Master's Degree
11 3 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (1.65%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 2 (1.10%) Azure Certification
12 2 (1.10%) FFIEC
12 2 (1.10%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 2 (1.10%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.55%) GIAC
13 1 (0.55%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (43.96%) GDPR
2 36 (19.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (17.03%) NIST
4 23 (12.64%) PCI DSS
5 15 (8.24%) ITGC
6 13 (7.14%) COBIT
7 11 (6.04%) GRC
8 10 (5.49%) HIPAA
8 10 (5.49%) QA
9 8 (4.40%) IFRS
10 7 (3.85%) GAAP
10 7 (3.85%) SOX 404
11 6 (3.30%) SLA
12 5 (2.75%) Basel III
12 5 (2.75%) PSD2
13 4 (2.20%) Data Quality
14 3 (1.65%) IFRS 9
14 3 (1.65%) PMO
15 2 (1.10%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (1.10%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 25 (13.74%) Active Directory
2 13 (7.14%) Docker
3 4 (2.20%) NDS
3 4 (2.20%) NetIQ eDirectory
4 2 (1.10%) RACF
4 2 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.55%) IAG
5 1 (0.55%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 23 (12.64%) Single Sign-On
2 15 (8.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 14 (7.69%) Kubernetes
4 4 (2.20%) Terraform
5 3 (1.65%) RSA Archer
6 2 (1.10%) Ansible
6 2 (1.10%) Control-M
6 2 (1.10%) zSecure
7 1 (0.55%) Avamar
7 1 (0.55%) CA Wily
7 1 (0.55%) EMC NetWorker
7 1 (0.55%) Oracle Identity Manager
7 1 (0.55%) Puppet
7 1 (0.55%) vCenter Server
7 1 (0.55%) VxRail
Vendors
1 38 (20.88%) Microsoft
2 34 (18.68%) SAP
3 29 (15.93%) Oracle
4 18 (9.89%) ServiceNow
5 17 (9.34%) Okta
6 9 (4.95%) CyberArk
7 7 (3.85%) Workday
8 5 (2.75%) ForgeRock
8 5 (2.75%) OpenText
8 5 (2.75%) Ping Identity
9 4 (2.20%) Ariba
9 4 (2.20%) IBM
9 4 (2.20%) Informatica
9 4 (2.20%) NetIQ
9 4 (2.20%) VMware
10 3 (1.65%) BeyondTrust
11 2 (1.10%) Atlassian
11 2 (1.10%) Databricks
11 2 (1.10%) Remedy
11 2 (1.10%) Thycotic
46 Sarbanes-Oxley jobs Nationwide