Generative AI jobs in the UK: the roles, the skills and the pay
What is a generative AI job? A generative AI job is a role that builds, deploys or improves products powered by large language models (LLMs) and other generative models, such as the models behind ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. The most common UK titles are LLM engineer, generative AI engineer, AI agent developer, AI solutions architect and prompt engineer. Mid-level LLM engineers in London commonly see advertised salaries of around £70,000 to £125,000.
LLM engineer and generative AI engineer jobs
LLM engineers build the applications that sit on top of large language models. The job is less about training models from scratch and more about making them useful and dependable: connecting them to company data, measuring quality, controlling cost and preventing harmful or wrong output.
Skills UK employers ask for
- Python or TypeScript, and the APIs for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and open-weight models
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG): chunking, embeddings, vector search and re-ranking
- Evaluation: building test sets, LLM-as-judge methods and regression testing for prompts
- Guardrails, prompt injection defence and data protection
- Fine-tuning and model selection when an off-the-shelf model is not enough
- Context management: deciding what the model sees and when. See what context management in AI is.
AI agent developer jobs
AI agent developers, sometimes called agentic AI engineers, build systems where a model plans, calls tools, reads and writes files, and works through multi-step tasks with limited supervision. It is one of the fastest growing AI job titles in the UK. Employers look for people who can design safe autonomy: clear goals, tool permissions, checkpoints for human approval and logs that explain what the agent did.
Skills UK employers ask for
- Tool calling and function calling, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent frameworks
- Agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, and multi-agent orchestration
- Sandboxing, permissions and human-in-the-loop design
- Observability and evaluation for multi-step tasks
Build these skills hands-on with our Introduction to Claude Code, Advanced Claude Code and Building Agents in Claude Code modules, and read how to prompt an AI agent and AI agents vs chatbots.
Prompt engineer jobs
Standalone prompt engineer jobs exist in the UK, but the skill is now more often part of a wider role: AI engineer, AI content specialist, conversation designer or AI product specialist. The work is writing, testing and maintaining the instructions, examples and context that make AI systems behave consistently, and building the evaluation sets that prove it. Strong writers with domain expertise in law, finance, healthcare or education are well placed.
Our How To Prompt AI series is a practical grounding: how to write prompts for AI, AI prompt engineering: top 10 tips, how to prompt ChatGPT and how to prompt Microsoft Copilot. For the business case, see what prompt engineering is for business.
AI solutions architect and forward deployed engineer jobs
Solutions architects and forward deployed engineers work with customers to design and launch generative AI systems. They combine engineering depth with consulting skills, and are hired by AI labs, cloud providers, consultancies and AI startups selling to enterprises across London and the UK.
AI evaluation, red teaming and AI safety jobs
As organisations rely on LLMs, they need people who can test them rigorously: evaluation engineers, red teamers and AI safety researchers. The UK is a centre for this work, with the government's AI Security Institute in London and safety teams at major labs. Skills include adversarial testing, statistics, threat modelling and clear reporting.
Generative AI salaries in the UK
| Role | UK (outside London) | London |
|---|---|---|
| LLM / generative AI engineer | £55,000 to £95,000 | £70,000 to £125,000 |
| AI agent developer | £55,000 to £95,000 | £70,000 to £125,000 |
| AI solutions architect | £70,000 to £110,000 | £85,000 to £135,000 |
| Prompt engineer / AI content specialist | £35,000 to £65,000 | £45,000 to £80,000 |
How to get a generative AI job in the UK
- Ship a small LLM product. A retrieval assistant over real documents, with an evaluation set and a write-up of what failed and how you fixed it.
- Build an agent with guardrails. Show tool permissions, approval steps and logs.
- Learn the tools employers use. Compare assistants with our Claude vs ChatGPT guide and keep current with new features of Claude and new features of ChatGPT.
- Understand the rules. Read our AI governance framework for UK business and how to keep information safe using AI tools.
- Present it well. See how to put AI skills on a CV.
Prefer classical machine learning? See machine learning jobs in the UK. Want AI work without heavy coding? See non-technical AI jobs.