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 28 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 469 369 519
Rank change year-on-year -100 +150 -24
Contract jobs citing Sarbanes-Oxley 182 166 68
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.36% 0.54% 0.16%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 2.12% 3.32% 1.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 97 49
10th Percentile £425 £423 £393
25th Percentile £500 £525 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £582 £600
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -3.08% +20.00%
75th Percentile £613 £681 £675
90th Percentile £738 £735 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £560 £550 £560
% change year-on-year +1.82% -1.79% +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 8,596 5,000 5,957
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.85% 16.37% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,498 3,209 3,697
10th Percentile £340 £278 £282
25th Percentile £413 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +6.38% -1.05% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 522 207 432
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.78 £11.07
25th Percentile £19.24 £18.50 £13.50
Median hourly rate £36.07 £31.49 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% +32.31% -36.53%
75th Percentile £67.50 £64.38 £50.00
90th Percentile £82.22 £84.15 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £28.59 £20.47
% change year-on-year +36.41% +39.70% -45.43%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -111 158 £598 +3.37% 37
London -51 92 £600 -8.05% 22
Work from Home -48 64 £600 +4.35% 11
UK excluding London -107 64 £560 +1.82% 22
North of England -65 26 £545 -4.22% 3
North West -41 20 £631 +9.74% 1
South East -57 13 £563 +4.65% 12
Midlands -54 11 £600 +6.38% 3
East of England -21 9 £530 -7.83% 2
West Midlands -55 8 £650 +7.79% 1
Yorkshire -52 6 £450 -9.95% 2
Scotland -8 4 - - 1
East Midlands -12 3 £550 +24.29% 2
South West -42 1 £600 +14.29%

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%) Apache Spark
2 5 (2.75%) Apache
2 5 (2.75%) IIS
3 2 (1.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (1.10%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.10%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.55%) Confluence
4 1 (0.55%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.55%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 16 (8.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 25 (13.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (2.75%) NetSuite
2 5 (2.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (2.20%) HFM
3 4 (2.20%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 4 (2.20%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (1.10%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (1.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (1.10%) SAP CO
4 2 (1.10%) SAP FI
4 2 (1.10%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.55%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
5 1 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.55%) SAP CS
5 1 (0.55%) SAP ECC
5 1 (0.55%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.55%) SAP LE
5 1 (0.55%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 67 (36.81%) Azure
2 49 (26.92%) AWS
3 28 (15.38%) Entra ID
4 12 (6.59%) Power Platform
5 11 (6.04%) Azure DevOps
5 11 (6.04%) SaaS
6 9 (4.95%) GCP
7 7 (3.85%) Microsoft 365
7 7 (3.85%) Snowflake
8 4 (2.20%) Azure Machine Learning
8 4 (2.20%) IaaS
9 2 (1.10%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (1.10%) Matillion
9 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Purview
9 2 (1.10%) OCI
9 2 (1.10%) PaaS
9 2 (1.10%) SuccessFactors
9 2 (1.10%) Veeva
10 1 (0.55%) Amazon EC2
10 1 (0.55%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 14 (7.69%) DNS
2 13 (7.14%) DHCP
2 13 (7.14%) Kerberos
3 7 (3.85%) HTTP
3 7 (3.85%) Network Security
4 5 (2.75%) HTTPS
5 4 (2.20%) Firewall
6 1 (0.55%) Intrusion Detection
6 1 (0.55%) LAN
6 1 (0.55%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.55%) WAN
6 1 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.59%) Power BI
2 9 (4.95%) Relational Database
3 8 (4.40%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.85%) NoSQL
5 5 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (2.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 3 (1.65%) Apache Cassandra
7 3 (1.65%) Data Lake
7 3 (1.65%) RDBMS
7 3 (1.65%) Spark SQL
8 2 (1.10%) Big Data
8 2 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (1.10%) GIS
8 2 (1.10%) Snowflake Schema
9 1 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
9 1 (0.55%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.55%) MongoDB
9 1 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.55%) Spotfire
9 1 (0.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (4.40%) Git
2 6 (3.30%) JIRA
3 5 (2.75%) GitLab
4 2 (1.10%) ER Studio
4 2 (1.10%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.10%) Postman
4 2 (1.10%) Robot Framework
4 2 (1.10%) Selenium
5 1 (0.55%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.55%) Gradle
5 1 (0.55%) Introscope
5 1 (0.55%) Maven
5 1 (0.55%) SonarQube
General
1 102 (56.04%) Finance
2 75 (41.21%) Social Skills
3 37 (20.33%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (11.54%) Legal
5 17 (9.34%) Banking
6 13 (7.14%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (4.95%) Pharmaceutical
8 8 (4.40%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (3.30%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (2.75%) Billing
12 3 (1.65%) Public Sector
13 2 (1.10%) General Ledger
13 2 (1.10%) Retail
14 1 (0.55%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.55%) French Language
14 1 (0.55%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.55%) Japanese Language
14 1 (0.55%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.55%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 32 (17.58%) Lead
2 24 (13.19%) Analyst
2 24 (13.19%) Architect
3 18 (9.89%) Consultant
4 13 (7.14%) Business Analyst
5 10 (5.49%) SOX Analyst
6 9 (4.95%) Finance Business Analyst
6 9 (4.95%) Financial Analyst
7 8 (4.40%) IT Analyst
7 8 (4.40%) Senior
8 7 (3.85%) Java Engineer
8 7 (3.85%) Project Manager
9 6 (3.30%) Data Engineer
10 5 (2.75%) Business Finance Analyst
10 5 (2.75%) Data Architect
10 5 (2.75%) Java Software Engineer
10 5 (2.75%) Security Consultant
10 5 (2.75%) Software Engineer
11 4 (2.20%) Change Manager
11 4 (2.20%) Engineering Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (12.64%) LDAP
2 19 (10.44%) OAuth
2 19 (10.44%) SAML
3 14 (7.69%) REST
4 8 (4.40%) SailPoint
5 7 (3.85%) SOAP
5 7 (3.85%) Spring
5 7 (3.85%) Spring Boot
6 6 (3.30%) JDBC
6 6 (3.30%) OpenID
6 6 (3.30%) Oracle Fusion
7 5 (2.75%) AWS CDK
7 5 (2.75%) J2EE
7 5 (2.75%) JSON
7 5 (2.75%) Middleware
8 4 (2.20%) Node.js
9 2 (1.10%) CSS
9 2 (1.10%) EDI
9 2 (1.10%) HTML
9 2 (1.10%) Snowpark
Miscellaneous
1 18 (9.89%) Replication
2 13 (7.14%) Management Information System
3 12 (6.59%) Cloud Native
4 8 (4.40%) Onboarding
4 8 (4.40%) Product Ownership
5 7 (3.85%) BYOD
6 5 (2.75%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.75%) Reinsurance
7 4 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (2.20%) Virtual Team
8 3 (1.65%) AI Agents
8 3 (1.65%) CMDB
8 3 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
8 3 (1.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 3 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
8 3 (1.65%) Operational Technology
9 2 (1.10%) Augmented Reality
9 2 (1.10%) Data Centre
9 2 (1.10%) Life Science
9 2 (1.10%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 32 (17.58%) Windows
2 13 (7.14%) Windows Server
3 10 (5.49%) Linux
4 4 (2.20%) Unix
5 1 (0.55%) AIX
5 1 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (30.77%) Stakeholder Management
2 50 (27.47%) Agile
3 35 (19.23%) Identity Access Management
4 34 (18.68%) RBAC
5 32 (17.58%) ERP
6 31 (17.03%) Continuous Improvement
6 31 (17.03%) DevOps
7 30 (16.48%) Change Management
8 27 (14.84%) Migration
8 27 (14.84%) Problem-Solving
9 25 (13.74%) Procure-to-Pay
10 23 (12.64%) AI
10 23 (12.64%) Cybersecurity
11 20 (10.99%) Information Security
12 19 (10.44%) CI/CD
12 19 (10.44%) Order to Cash
12 19 (10.44%) Roadmaps
13 18 (9.89%) ETL
13 18 (9.89%) Record to Report
14 17 (9.34%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 26 (14.29%) SQL
2 24 (13.19%) PowerShell
3 23 (12.64%) Python
4 21 (11.54%) Java
5 4 (2.20%) Bash
5 4 (2.20%) TypeScript
6 2 (1.10%) JavaScript
7 1 (0.55%) Jython
7 1 (0.55%) R
7 1 (0.55%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 29 (15.93%) Degree
2 20 (10.99%) CISSP
3 17 (9.34%) Security Cleared
4 16 (8.79%) ACCA
5 15 (8.24%) CISM
6 14 (7.69%) SC Cleared
7 13 (7.14%) PMI Certification
8 12 (6.59%) PMP
9 11 (6.04%) CIMA
10 8 (4.40%) CISA
11 4 (2.20%) CRISC
11 4 (2.20%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (1.65%) Azure Certification
12 3 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.65%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 2 (1.10%) ISTQB
13 2 (1.10%) Master's Degree
13 2 (1.10%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 74 (40.66%) GDPR
2 38 (20.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (11.54%) NIST
4 20 (10.99%) PCI DSS
5 16 (8.79%) HIPAA
6 14 (7.69%) GAAP
6 14 (7.69%) IFRS
6 14 (7.69%) ITGC
7 11 (6.04%) Data Quality
7 11 (6.04%) GRC
8 7 (3.85%) COBIT
9 5 (2.75%) Solvency II
10 4 (2.20%) QA
11 3 (1.65%) NIST 800
11 3 (1.65%) PMO
11 3 (1.65%) SLA
12 2 (1.10%) Basel III
12 2 (1.10%) GxP
13 1 (0.55%) IFRS 17
13 1 (0.55%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 30 (16.48%) Active Directory
2 6 (3.30%) Docker
Systems Management
1 21 (11.54%) Single Sign-On
2 14 (7.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 11 (6.04%) Kubernetes
4 1 (0.55%) CA Wily
4 1 (0.55%) Control-M
4 1 (0.55%) Puppet
4 1 (0.55%) RSA Archer
4 1 (0.55%) Terraform
Vendors
1 56 (30.77%) SAP
2 38 (20.88%) Microsoft
3 21 (11.54%) ServiceNow
4 17 (9.34%) Oracle
5 16 (8.79%) Okta
6 14 (7.69%) Workday
7 10 (5.49%) CyberArk
8 7 (3.85%) Ariba
9 5 (2.75%) Databricks
10 4 (2.20%) Hyperion
10 4 (2.20%) Salesforce
10 4 (2.20%) Tagetik
11 3 (1.65%) Alteryx
11 3 (1.65%) Bloomberg
11 3 (1.65%) Refinitiv
12 2 (1.10%) Centrify
12 2 (1.10%) Google
12 2 (1.10%) Informatica
12 2 (1.10%) OpenText
13 1 (0.55%) Splunk