Job market reports · Skill · October 2026
retrieval
195 live US technical postings name retrieval in October 2026. Here is which roles ask for it, what those roles pay, and where they are.
Which roles ask for it
Share of the 195 postings naming retrieval that belong to each role. This is the answer to "what would learning this qualify me for".
- 1Software Engineer39%
- 2AI Engineer26.7%
- 3Machine Learning Engineer22.6%
- 4Data Scientist4.6%
- 5DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineer2.1%
- 6Full-Stack Engineer2.1%
- 7Backend Engineer1.5%
- 8Data Engineer1%
What postings asking for it pay
Across every role, for the postings that both name this skill and disclose a salary. A skill does not cause a salary — senior roles ask for more of everything — so read this as association, not as a raise.
Where those jobs are
Metro share of the postings naming this skill.
- 1San Francisco, CA36.4%
- 2New York, NY17.9%
- 3Remote15.4%
- 4Silicon Valley, CA10.3%
- 5Austin, TX2.1%
- 6Boston, MA1.5%
- 7San Diego, CA1%
- 8Washington, DC1%
How we counted
967,730 live US postings read directly from 82,954 employers’ own careers pages in October 2026 — not from a jobs aggregator, so a role reposted across several sites is counted once. Full methodology, limitations and external checks.