Retrieval-Augmented Generation Contracts

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Retrieval-Augmented Generation skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Retrieval-Augmented Generation over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 495 576 -
Rank change year-on-year +81 - -
Contract jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation 25 6 0
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.085% 0.014% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.094% 0.016% -
Number of daily rates quoted 15 5 0
10th Percentile £390 £510 -
25th Percentile £538 £525 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £700 £600 -
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% - -
75th Percentile £779 £625 -
90th Percentile £848 - -
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 - -

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 26,594 37,597 53,655
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 90.84% 86.31% 89.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,149 24,227 37,238
10th Percentile £308 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £743 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.50% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,071 2,443 1,746
10th Percentile £14.41 £12.75 £11.00
25th Percentile £18.21 £16.00 £16.25
Median hourly rate £29.00 £35.65 £37.30
Median % change year-on-year -18.65% -4.42% +49.20%
75th Percentile £60.38 £59.98 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £37.34 £36.00
% change year-on-year -26.35% +3.72% +80.00%

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

Daily rate trend for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Top 7 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation within the UK over the 6 months to 1 May 2025. 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 +73 18 £700 +33.33% 115
London +48 12 £700 +33.33% 90
Work from Home +47 12 £838 +39.58% 59
UK excluding London - 4 £500 - 45
South East - 2 £350 - 25
South West - 1 £550 - 1
Scotland - 1 £500 - 5

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (8.00%) Apache
1 2 (8.00%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (4.00%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 13 (52.00%) AWS
2 6 (24.00%) Azure
2 6 (24.00%) GCP
3 3 (12.00%) Amazon SageMaker
4 2 (8.00%) Azure AI
4 2 (8.00%) Vertex AI
5 1 (4.00%) Amazon Bedrock
5 1 (4.00%) Amazon OpenSearch
5 1 (4.00%) Amazon S3
5 1 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Cognitive Services
5 1 (4.00%) Azure DevOps
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (4.00%) Cloud Computing
5 1 (4.00%) Serverless
5 1 (4.00%) Snowflake
5 1 (4.00%) WhatsApp
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (12.00%) NoSQL
2 2 (8.00%) Big Data
2 2 (8.00%) Relational Database
3 1 (4.00%) DynamoDB
3 1 (4.00%) Flink
3 1 (4.00%) Hadoop
3 1 (4.00%) MongoDB
3 1 (4.00%) PostgreSQL
General
1 8 (32.00%) Finance
2 3 (12.00%) Public Sector
3 1 (4.00%) Banking
3 1 (4.00%) Front Office
3 1 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (4.00%) Military
3 1 (4.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (28.00%) Developer
2 5 (20.00%) Artificial Intelligence Specialist
3 4 (16.00%) Data Scientist
3 4 (16.00%) Software Developer
4 3 (12.00%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
4 3 (12.00%) Senior
5 2 (8.00%) Architect
5 2 (8.00%) Artificial Intelligence Architect
5 2 (8.00%) Artificial Intelligence Software Developer
5 2 (8.00%) Data Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Lead
5 2 (8.00%) Python Developer
6 1 (4.00%) Analyst
6 1 (4.00%) Consultant
6 1 (4.00%) Java Developer
6 1 (4.00%) Senior Data Engineer
6 1 (4.00%) Senior Developer
6 1 (4.00%) Software Engineer
6 1 (4.00%) Test Analyst
6 1 (4.00%) Trainer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (36.00%) LangChain
2 6 (24.00%) FastAPI
3 5 (20.00%) Hugging Face
4 3 (12.00%) NumPy
4 3 (12.00%) Pandas
5 1 (4.00%) FHIR
5 1 (4.00%) Kafka
5 1 (4.00%) pytest
5 1 (4.00%) Spring
5 1 (4.00%) Spring Boot
5 1 (4.00%) ZeroMQ
Miscellaneous
1 3 (12.00%) AI Agents
2 2 (8.00%) Algorithms
2 2 (8.00%) Cyber Threat
2 2 (8.00%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (4.00%) Data Structures
3 1 (4.00%) NHS
3 1 (4.00%) Public Cloud
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (92.00%) Artificial Intelligence
2 19 (76.00%) LLM
3 17 (68.00%) Generative AI
4 13 (52.00%) Prompt Engineering
5 12 (48.00%) Data Science
6 11 (44.00%) Machine Learning
7 8 (32.00%) Agile
8 6 (24.00%) Architectural Design
8 6 (24.00%) End-to-End Testing
8 6 (24.00%) Integration Testing
8 6 (24.00%) Unit Testing
9 4 (16.00%) Data Ingestion
9 4 (16.00%) Decision-Making
9 4 (16.00%) Prototyping
9 4 (16.00%) Rapid Prototyping
9 4 (16.00%) Sentiment Analysis
10 3 (12.00%) Design Patterns
10 3 (12.00%) User Research
10 3 (12.00%) Workflow
11 2 (8.00%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 19 (76.00%) Python
2 3 (12.00%) SQL
3 2 (8.00%) C++
3 2 (8.00%) Java
4 1 (4.00%) PL/SQL
4 1 (4.00%) R
Qualifications
1 7 (28.00%) Security Cleared
2 6 (24.00%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (8.00%) Accessibility
2 1 (4.00%) GDPR
2 1 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (4.00%) SNOMED CT
Systems Management
1 1 (4.00%) Kubernetes
1 1 (4.00%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 3 (12.00%) Google
2 1 (4.00%) Dynatrace
2 1 (4.00%) Microsoft
2 1 (4.00%) OpenAI
2 1 (4.00%) Splunk