SEPA Contract Job Trends

Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SEPA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 597 470 560
Rank change year-on-year -127 +90 +99
Contract jobs citing SEPA 44 47 30
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.089% 0.16% 0.069%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.53% 1.00% 0.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 31 25
10th Percentile £416 £375 £588
25th Percentile £425 £405 £638
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £483 £700
Median % change year-on-year +24.35% -31.07% +7.28%
75th Percentile £700 £597 -
90th Percentile £731 £700 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £487 -
% change year-on-year +23.14% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £87.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

SEPA 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 8,257 4,697 6,011
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.68% 16.07% 13.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,293 2,992 3,769
10th Percentile £342 £268 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £614 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £475
% change year-on-year +5.26% - -2.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 189 419
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.00 £13.22
Median hourly rate £36.00 £32.50 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.77% +38.30% -37.75%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £82.79 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £32.81 £19.18
% change year-on-year +21.91% +71.06% -48.85%

SEPA
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SEPA job vacancy trend in the UK

SEPA
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEPA.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEPA

SEPA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SEPA over the 6 months to 7 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SEPA in the UK

SEPA
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEPA.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEPA

SEPA
Top 10 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SEPA within the UK over the 6 months to 7 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 41 £575 +18.01% 8
London -74 29 £575 +27.78% 6
UK excluding London -99 11 £600 +23.14% 2
Work from Home -58 10 £650 +32.11% 4
North of England -78 7 £481 -2.18% 2
North West -48 6 £481 -2.97% 2
South East - 3 £710 -
Yorkshire -55 1 - -
East Midlands - 1 £700 -
Midlands - 1 £700 -

SEPA
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 1 (2.27%) WebSphere
Business Applications
1 3 (6.82%) Avolution ABACUS
2 1 (2.27%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 15 (34.09%) AWS
2 10 (22.73%) Azure
3 5 (11.36%) GCP
4 4 (9.09%) GitHub
5 2 (4.55%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (4.55%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.55%) Db2
1 2 (4.55%) Hazelcast
1 2 (4.55%) NoSQL
1 2 (4.55%) Redis
2 1 (2.27%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 4 (9.09%) Jenkins
1 4 (9.09%) JIRA
2 3 (6.82%) Git
2 3 (6.82%) Maven
3 2 (4.55%) Gatling
3 2 (4.55%) SonarQube
4 1 (2.27%) Gradle
4 1 (2.27%) IBM UrbanCode
General
1 36 (81.82%) Finance
2 33 (75.00%) Banking
3 15 (34.09%) Social Skills
4 6 (13.64%) Financial Institution
4 6 (13.64%) Organisational Skills
5 4 (9.09%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
7 1 (2.27%) Corporate Banking
7 1 (2.27%) Private Banking
7 1 (2.27%) Public Sector
7 1 (2.27%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 22 (50.00%) Architect
2 19 (43.18%) Solutions Architect
3 16 (36.36%) Payments Architect
4 13 (29.55%) Payments Solutions Architect
5 7 (15.91%) Senior
6 6 (13.64%) Developer
7 5 (11.36%) Analyst
7 5 (11.36%) Java Developer
7 5 (11.36%) Java Engineer
8 4 (9.09%) Business Analyst
8 4 (9.09%) Senior Java Engineer
9 3 (6.82%) Applications Architect
9 3 (6.82%) Payments Analyst
9 3 (6.82%) Senior Architect
10 2 (4.55%) Business Integration Analyst
10 2 (4.55%) Integration Analyst
10 2 (4.55%) Payments Business Analyst
10 2 (4.55%) Project Manager
10 2 (4.55%) Senior Solutions Architect
11 1 (2.27%) Principal Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (22.73%) Spring
1 10 (22.73%) Spring Boot
2 7 (15.91%) Kafka
3 6 (13.64%) REST
4 3 (6.82%) .NET
4 3 (6.82%) JMS
4 3 (6.82%) OAuth
4 3 (6.82%) OAuth2
4 3 (6.82%) OpenID
4 3 (6.82%) OpenTelemetry
4 3 (6.82%) Quarkus
5 2 (4.55%) Apache Avro
5 2 (4.55%) JSON
5 2 (4.55%) Micronaut
5 2 (4.55%) Middleware
5 2 (4.55%) SOAP
6 1 (2.27%) gRPC
6 1 (2.27%) JWT
6 1 (2.27%) OpenAPI
6 1 (2.27%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 34 (77.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
2 7 (15.91%) Cloud Native
3 5 (11.36%) Mainframe
4 4 (9.09%) Low-Code
5 3 (6.82%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (4.55%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (4.55%) PMI
7 1 (2.27%) Clustering
7 1 (2.27%) Onboarding
7 1 (2.27%) PDA
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.27%) Linux
1 1 (2.27%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (38.64%) Microservices
2 13 (29.55%) Migration
3 10 (22.73%) User Acceptance Testing
4 9 (20.45%) CI/CD
4 9 (20.45%) DevOps
4 9 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
4 9 (20.45%) Validation
5 8 (18.18%) Anti-Money Laundering
5 8 (18.18%) Integration Patterns
6 7 (15.91%) Agile
6 7 (15.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 6 (13.64%) Containerisation
7 6 (13.64%) Stakeholder Management
8 5 (11.36%) Acceptance Criteria
8 5 (11.36%) AI
8 5 (11.36%) Event-Driven
8 5 (11.36%) High Availability
8 5 (11.36%) Model Validation
8 5 (11.36%) Order Management
8 5 (11.36%) TOGAF
Programming Languages
1 13 (29.55%) Java
2 6 (13.64%) SQL
3 3 (6.82%) Python
4 1 (2.27%) ActionScript
4 1 (2.27%) ActionScript 2.0
4 1 (2.27%) JavaScript
4 1 (2.27%) Korn
Qualifications
1 5 (11.36%) CISA
2 3 (6.82%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (4.55%) PMI Certification
4 1 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (2.27%) Degree
4 1 (2.27%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (77.27%) ISO 20022
2 16 (36.36%) PSD2
3 7 (15.91%) QA
4 5 (11.36%) ISO 8583
5 3 (6.82%) TARGET2
System Software
1 10 (22.73%) Docker
2 1 (2.27%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 10 (22.73%) Kubernetes
2 4 (9.09%) Argo
2 4 (9.09%) Terraform
3 2 (4.55%) Ansible
3 2 (4.55%) Grafana
3 2 (4.55%) Prometheus
4 1 (2.27%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 6 (13.64%) Oracle
2 4 (9.09%) IBM
3 2 (4.55%) Confluent
3 2 (4.55%) Fiserv
4 1 (2.27%) Broadcom
4 1 (2.27%) Microsoft
4 1 (2.27%) SmartStream
4 1 (2.27%) Temenos