I just replied to you in another thread, but in short:
There arent many contracts (so far i ran into 1 for every 3 or 4 towns i visited).
The interface is lacking (you cant tell which contract you just ran into, and you cant go back to save game before you take it, as it disappears).
If there is an available contract youll see a parchment in the upper left corner of the base settlement screen.
I think one of the problems is that maybe better contracts require some events to unfold? (like “go burn down map location X for 1000 coins” maybe requires a party from that location to do something to that town)