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 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 443 370 509
Rank change year-on-year -73 +139 -5
Contract jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley 180 155 62
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.54% 0.15%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.26% 3.40% 1.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 87 40
10th Percentile £450 £345 £476
25th Percentile £500 £519 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £582 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -3.08% +9.09%
75th Percentile £613 £698 £675
90th Percentile £720 £848 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £563 £550 £560
% change year-on-year +2.27% -1.79% +12.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 4 1
10th Percentile £50.00 £37.93 -
25th Percentile £55.63 £62.56 £67.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £86.25 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.54% +23.21% +76.77%
75th Percentile £76.50 £92.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £81.20 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £52.75 £70.00
% change year-on-year +18.01% -24.64% +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 7,981 4,560 6,021
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.52% 15.83% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,132 2,929 3,826
10th Percentile £340 £263 £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 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 466 173 384
10th Percentile £14.00 £17.79 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.14 £13.18
Median hourly rate £36.04 £34.50 £21.38
Median % change year-on-year +4.45% +61.38% -38.92%
75th Percentile £67.25 £67.50 £45.94
90th Percentile £82.13 £80.00 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £36.01 £18.27
% change year-on-year +11.08% +97.10% -43.78%

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 22 May 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 22 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Sarbanes-Oxley in the UK

Sarbanes-Oxley
Top 13 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 22 May 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 -93 155 £575 -1.12% 45
London -46 95 £600 -7.69% 24
Work from Home -26 60 £600 +6.67% 21
UK excluding London -91 60 £563 +2.27% 28
North of England -56 24 £580 +0.87% 6
North West -27 20 £631 +9.74% 2
South East -52 14 £519 -4.60% 11
Midlands -61 12 £600 +6.38% 5
West Midlands -50 9 £650 +7.79% 3
Scotland -3 5 £700 - 1
East of England -27 5 £600 +4.35% 3
Yorkshire -54 4 £428 -15.56% 4
East Midlands -23 3 £550 +24.29% 2

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 6 (3.33%) Apache Spark
2 4 (2.22%) Apache
3 3 (1.67%) IIS
3 3 (1.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 3 (1.67%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.11%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.56%) Confluence
5 1 (0.56%) IBM HTTP Server
5 1 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 17 (9.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 24 (13.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (4.44%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 6 (3.33%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (2.78%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 4 (2.22%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (1.67%) HFM
6 3 (1.67%) NetSuite
6 3 (1.67%) OpenText VIM for SAP
6 3 (1.67%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (1.11%) Oracle ERP
7 2 (1.11%) Oracle FAH
7 2 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 1 (0.56%) Oracle Applications
8 1 (0.56%) SAP CO
8 1 (0.56%) SAP CS
8 1 (0.56%) SAP ECC
8 1 (0.56%) SAP FI/CO
8 1 (0.56%) SAP GTS
8 1 (0.56%) SAP LE
8 1 (0.56%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 64 (35.56%) Azure
2 43 (23.89%) AWS
3 30 (16.67%) Entra ID
4 14 (7.78%) Power Platform
5 11 (6.11%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (4.44%) GCP
7 7 (3.89%) SaaS
8 6 (3.33%) OCI
9 5 (2.78%) IaaS
10 4 (2.22%) Microsoft 365
10 4 (2.22%) Snowflake
11 3 (1.67%) PaaS
12 2 (1.11%) Azure Machine Learning
12 2 (1.11%) Cloud Computing
12 2 (1.11%) Microsoft Purview
12 2 (1.11%) SuccessFactors
12 2 (1.11%) Veeva
13 1 (0.56%) AWS Lambda
13 1 (0.56%) Azure Data Factory
13 1 (0.56%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 16 (8.89%) DNS
2 15 (8.33%) DHCP
2 15 (8.33%) Kerberos
3 7 (3.89%) HTTP
3 7 (3.89%) Network Security
4 3 (1.67%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.56%) Firewall
5 1 (0.56%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.56%) LAN
5 1 (0.56%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.56%) WAN
5 1 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (7.78%) Power BI
2 11 (6.11%) Relational Database
3 9 (5.00%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.89%) Data Lake
4 7 (3.89%) Spark SQL
5 6 (3.33%) NoSQL
6 5 (2.78%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
7 4 (2.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 3 (1.67%) Apache Cassandra
8 3 (1.67%) Big Data
9 1 (0.56%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.56%) BigQuery
9 1 (0.56%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
9 1 (0.56%) Spotfire
Development Applications
1 13 (7.22%) Git
2 11 (6.11%) GitLab
3 7 (3.89%) JIRA
4 5 (2.78%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.67%) Postman
5 3 (1.67%) Robot Framework
5 3 (1.67%) Selenium
6 1 (0.56%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.56%) Gradle
6 1 (0.56%) Introscope
6 1 (0.56%) Maven
6 1 (0.56%) REST Assured
General
1 107 (59.44%) Finance
2 77 (42.78%) Social Skills
3 35 (19.44%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (13.33%) Banking
5 21 (11.67%) Legal
6 14 (7.78%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (4.44%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (3.89%) Pharmaceutical
9 6 (3.33%) General Ledger
9 6 (3.33%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (2.78%) Billing
11 2 (1.11%) Financial Institution
11 2 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 2 (1.11%) Japanese Language
11 2 (1.11%) Public Sector
11 2 (1.11%) Retail
12 1 (0.56%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.56%) French Language
12 1 (0.56%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 32 (17.78%) Lead
2 26 (14.44%) Analyst
3 18 (10.00%) Architect
4 15 (8.33%) Consultant
5 12 (6.67%) Business Analyst
6 10 (5.56%) SOX Analyst
7 8 (4.44%) Finance Business Analyst
7 8 (4.44%) Financial Analyst
7 8 (4.44%) IT Analyst
7 8 (4.44%) Senior
8 7 (3.89%) Information Officer
8 7 (3.89%) Information Security Officer
8 7 (3.89%) Java Engineer
8 7 (3.89%) Security Officer
9 6 (3.33%) Project Manager
10 5 (2.78%) Developer
10 5 (2.78%) Java Software Engineer
10 5 (2.78%) Programme Manager
10 5 (2.78%) Security Consultant
10 5 (2.78%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (14.44%) LDAP
2 22 (12.22%) OAuth
2 22 (12.22%) SAML
3 12 (6.67%) REST
4 8 (4.44%) Oracle Fusion
5 7 (3.89%) PySpark
5 7 (3.89%) SOAP
5 7 (3.89%) Spark Streaming
5 7 (3.89%) Spring
5 7 (3.89%) Spring Boot
6 6 (3.33%) JDBC
6 6 (3.33%) Middleware
6 6 (3.33%) OpenID
7 5 (2.78%) AWS CDK
7 5 (2.78%) J2EE
7 5 (2.78%) JSON
7 5 (2.78%) SailPoint
8 4 (2.22%) Node.js
9 3 (1.67%) HTML
9 3 (1.67%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 18 (10.00%) Replication
2 14 (7.78%) Management Information System
3 11 (6.11%) Cloud Native
4 8 (4.44%) Onboarding
4 8 (4.44%) Product Ownership
5 7 (3.89%) BYOD
5 7 (3.89%) Distributed Computing
6 6 (3.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 4 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
7 4 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (1.67%) CMDB
8 3 (1.67%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (1.67%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.11%) AI Agents
9 2 (1.11%) Augmented Reality
9 2 (1.11%) Data Centre
9 2 (1.11%) Life Science
9 2 (1.11%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 30 (16.67%) Windows
2 15 (8.33%) Windows Server
3 11 (6.11%) Linux
4 4 (2.22%) Unix
5 1 (0.56%) AIX
5 1 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.56%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (32.78%) Agile
2 55 (30.56%) Stakeholder Management
3 35 (19.44%) Identity Access Management
4 34 (18.89%) DevOps
5 32 (17.78%) RBAC
6 31 (17.22%) Continuous Improvement
7 30 (16.67%) ERP
8 29 (16.11%) Procure-to-Pay
9 28 (15.56%) Change Management
10 26 (14.44%) CI/CD
11 24 (13.33%) Migration
11 24 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
12 23 (12.78%) ETL
13 22 (12.22%) AI
13 22 (12.22%) Cybersecurity
14 21 (11.67%) Information Security
15 20 (11.11%) Order to Cash
16 18 (10.00%) Waterfall
17 17 (9.44%) Record to Report
17 17 (9.44%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 34 (18.89%) SQL
2 29 (16.11%) Python
3 27 (15.00%) PowerShell
4 25 (13.89%) Java
5 4 (2.22%) Bash
5 4 (2.22%) TypeScript
6 3 (1.67%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.11%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.56%) CLIST
8 1 (0.56%) JCL
8 1 (0.56%) Jython
8 1 (0.56%) REXX
8 1 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 28 (15.56%) Degree
2 20 (11.11%) CISSP
3 19 (10.56%) Security Cleared
4 17 (9.44%) SC Cleared
5 15 (8.33%) CISM
6 14 (7.78%) PMI Certification
7 13 (7.22%) PMP
8 10 (5.56%) ACCA
9 9 (5.00%) CIMA
10 7 (3.89%) CISA
11 4 (2.22%) CRISC
11 4 (2.22%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.67%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 2 (1.11%) Azure Certification
13 2 (1.11%) ISTQB
13 2 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 2 (1.11%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 1 (0.56%) PgMP
14 1 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (44.44%) GDPR
2 38 (21.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 26 (14.44%) NIST
4 22 (12.22%) PCI DSS
5 14 (7.78%) HIPAA
6 13 (7.22%) IFRS
6 13 (7.22%) ITGC
7 10 (5.56%) GAAP
8 8 (4.44%) COBIT
8 8 (4.44%) Data Quality
9 7 (3.89%) GRC
10 6 (3.33%) QA
11 5 (2.78%) Basel III
12 3 (1.67%) IFRS 9
12 3 (1.67%) NIST 800
12 3 (1.67%) PMO
12 3 (1.67%) SLA
13 2 (1.11%) GxP
13 2 (1.11%) IFRS 17
14 1 (0.56%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 29 (16.11%) Active Directory
2 11 (6.11%) Docker
3 1 (0.56%) RACF
Systems Management
1 22 (12.22%) Single Sign-On
2 16 (8.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 16 (8.89%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.11%) Control-M
3 2 (1.11%) Terraform
4 1 (0.56%) Ansible
4 1 (0.56%) CA Wily
4 1 (0.56%) Puppet
4 1 (0.56%) RSA Archer
4 1 (0.56%) zSecure
Vendors
1 51 (28.33%) SAP
2 37 (20.56%) Microsoft
3 24 (13.33%) ServiceNow
4 18 (10.00%) Okta
4 18 (10.00%) Oracle
5 17 (9.44%) Workday
6 12 (6.67%) CyberArk
7 6 (3.33%) Ariba
8 4 (2.22%) Informatica
9 3 (1.67%) Bloomberg
9 3 (1.67%) Hyperion
9 3 (1.67%) Refinitiv
9 3 (1.67%) Tagetik
10 2 (1.11%) BMC
10 2 (1.11%) Databricks
10 2 (1.11%) IBM
10 2 (1.11%) OpenText
10 2 (1.11%) Remedy
10 2 (1.11%) Salesforce
10 2 (1.11%) Splunk