Retrieval-Augmented Generation Job Trends

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Retrieval-Augmented Generation skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 504 666 -
Rank change year-on-year +162 - -
Permanent jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation 138 41 0
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.077% -
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.29% 0.085% -
Number of salaries quoted 68 27 0
10th Percentile £62,500 £57,500 -
25th Percentile £69,250 £82,500 -
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £78,750 £92,500 -
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% - -
75th Percentile £95,000 £100,625 -
90th Percentile £115,750 £116,500 -
UK excluding London median annual salary £75,000 £92,500 -
% change year-on-year -18.92% - -

All Process & 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 permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 48,033 48,451 50,427
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 81.00% 90.60% 89.96%
Number of salaries quoted 28,230 23,579 38,463
10th Percentile £28,500 £35,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £45,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - -4.00%
75th Percentile £75,000 £80,000 £78,479
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £52,000
% change year-on-year -9.09% +5.77% -5.45%

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation job vacancy trend in the UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation over the 6 months to 12 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Retrieval-Augmented Generation in the UK

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
Top 13 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Retrieval-Augmented Generation within the UK over the 6 months to 12 January 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +164 120 £78,750 -14.86% 476
London +127 96 £84,250 -15.75% 105
Work from Home +76 35 £75,000 -18.92% 162
UK excluding London +59 24 £75,000 -18.92% 441
North of England +10 6 £75,000 -18.92% 88
North West - 6 £75,000 - 35
South East - 5 £65,000 - 127
Northern Ireland - 5 £95,000 - 11
East of England - 3 £47,500 - 71
West Midlands +24 2 £87,500 -2.78% 14
Midlands +20 2 £87,500 +32.58% 54
South West - 2 £78,750 - 58
Scotland - 1 £100,000 - 16

Retrieval-Augmented Generation
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 13 (9.42%) Appian
2 9 (6.52%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (4.35%) Apache Spark
4 3 (2.17%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.72%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (2.17%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 67 (48.55%) AWS
2 62 (44.93%) Azure
3 39 (28.26%) Vertex AI
4 33 (23.91%) Amazon Bedrock
5 24 (17.39%) GCP
6 18 (13.04%) Azure AI
7 15 (10.87%) Azure Machine Learning
8 14 (10.14%) Anthropic Claude
9 12 (8.70%) Power Automate
10 11 (7.97%) H2O.ai
10 11 (7.97%) OpenShift
11 10 (7.25%) GitHub
12 9 (6.52%) Azure Data Factory
13 8 (5.80%) Power Platform
13 8 (5.80%) Serverless
14 7 (5.07%) Amazon SageMaker
14 7 (5.07%) Datadog
14 7 (5.07%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (5.07%) Snowflake
15 6 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (17.39%) Pinecone
2 12 (8.70%) Metadata
2 12 (8.70%) Weaviate
3 11 (7.97%) Data Lake
4 9 (6.52%) SQL Server
5 7 (5.07%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (5.07%) Tableau
6 6 (4.35%) NoSQL
7 5 (3.62%) Amazon Redshift
7 5 (3.62%) Apache Iceberg
7 5 (3.62%) BigQuery
7 5 (3.62%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (3.62%) Delta Lake
7 5 (3.62%) Looker
7 5 (3.62%) MySQL
8 4 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (2.17%) MongoDB
10 2 (1.45%) Semantic Layer
11 1 (0.72%) Big Data
11 1 (0.72%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 20 (14.49%) MLflow
2 3 (2.17%) Git
2 3 (2.17%) GitLab
2 3 (2.17%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.17%) Vite
3 2 (1.45%) JIRA
General
1 66 (47.83%) Social Skills
2 31 (22.46%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (19.57%) Finance
4 13 (9.42%) Manufacturing
5 7 (5.07%) Legal
5 7 (5.07%) Marketing
6 6 (4.35%) Public Sector
6 6 (4.35%) Telecoms
7 4 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (1.45%) Law
9 2 (1.45%) Local Government
10 1 (0.72%) Advertising
10 1 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.72%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 43 (31.16%) Senior
2 37 (26.81%) Consultant
3 34 (24.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 32 (23.19%) Senior Consultant
5 30 (21.74%) Gen AI Consultant
6 19 (13.77%) Lead
7 14 (10.14%) Developer
8 13 (9.42%) Data Engineer
9 9 (6.52%) Automation Engineer
10 7 (5.07%) Lead Developer
11 6 (4.35%) Artificial Intelligence Consultant
11 6 (4.35%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
11 6 (4.35%) Data Science Engineer
12 5 (3.62%) Data Consultant
12 5 (3.62%) Gen AI Engineer
12 5 (3.62%) Lead Data Engineer
12 5 (3.62%) Senior Developer
13 4 (2.90%) Architect
13 4 (2.90%) Data Scientist
13 4 (2.90%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (43.48%) LangChain
2 49 (35.51%) PyTorch
3 47 (34.06%) TensorFlow
4 21 (15.22%) scikit-learn
5 20 (14.49%) Pandas
6 18 (13.04%) Faiss
6 18 (13.04%) FastAPI
6 18 (13.04%) Hugging Face
7 16 (11.59%) REST
8 14 (10.14%) Django
8 14 (10.14%) LangGraph
8 14 (10.14%) NumPy
8 14 (10.14%) React
9 12 (8.70%) .NET
9 12 (8.70%) Keras
10 11 (7.97%) RESTful
11 10 (7.25%) Flask
11 10 (7.25%) Node.js
11 10 (7.25%) OAuth
12 9 (6.52%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 35 (25.36%) Legacy Systems
2 26 (18.84%) AI Agents
3 11 (7.97%) Cloud Native
3 11 (7.97%) Data Centre
3 11 (7.97%) Management Information System
4 9 (6.52%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (6.52%) Low-Code
4 9 (6.52%) Product Ownership
5 5 (3.62%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.90%) Hackathon
7 3 (2.17%) CUDA
7 3 (2.17%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.45%) Autonomous Agent
8 2 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.45%) Mobile App
8 2 (1.45%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.45%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.72%) Marketing Technology
9 1 (0.72%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1 (0.72%) Android
1 1 (0.72%) Apple iOS
1 1 (0.72%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (100.00%) AI
2 117 (84.78%) LLM
3 102 (73.91%) Machine Learning
4 93 (67.39%) Generative AI
5 65 (47.10%) MLOps
6 60 (43.48%) Prompt Engineering
7 57 (41.30%) Stakeholder Management
8 52 (37.68%) Computer Science
9 50 (36.23%) CI/CD
10 43 (31.16%) Data Engineering
11 37 (26.81%) Business Development
11 37 (26.81%) Data Science
12 35 (25.36%) Agile
12 35 (25.36%) Analytics
12 35 (25.36%) Data Pipeline
13 28 (20.29%) Open Source
14 26 (18.84%) Thought Leadership
15 25 (18.12%) IT Strategy
16 23 (16.67%) Clean Code
16 23 (16.67%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 69 (50.00%) Python
2 23 (16.67%) SQL
3 16 (11.59%) Java
4 15 (10.87%) JavaScript
4 15 (10.87%) TypeScript
5 10 (7.25%) C#
6 9 (6.52%) Go
7 5 (3.62%) Bash
7 5 (3.62%) PHP
7 5 (3.62%) Scala
8 2 (1.45%) R
9 1 (0.72%) C++
9 1 (0.72%) Perl
Qualifications
1 55 (39.86%) Degree
2 43 (31.16%) Computer Science Degree
3 19 (13.77%) Master's Degree
4 8 (5.80%) MCP
5 7 (5.07%) Security Cleared
6 6 (4.35%) SC Cleared
7 4 (2.90%) Azure Certification
8 2 (1.45%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.72%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (15.22%) Data Quality
2 13 (9.42%) QA
3 5 (3.62%) Accessibility
4 4 (2.90%) SLA
5 2 (1.45%) NCSC
6 1 (0.72%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.72%) NIST
System Software
1 36 (26.09%) Docker
Systems Management
1 30 (21.74%) Kubernetes
2 14 (10.14%) Terraform
3 4 (2.90%) Ansible
4 1 (0.72%) Grafana
4 1 (0.72%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 37 (26.81%) OpenAI
2 36 (26.09%) Google
3 26 (18.84%) Databricks
4 18 (13.04%) Microsoft
5 13 (9.42%) NVIDIA
6 11 (7.97%) Dell
6 11 (7.97%) UiPath
7 9 (6.52%) Automation Anywhere
8 5 (3.62%) Foundry
8 5 (3.62%) Palantir
9 1 (0.72%) Alteryx
9 1 (0.72%) Oracle
9 1 (0.72%) OutSystems
9 1 (0.72%) Red Hat
9 1 (0.72%) Samsung