Domain
Machine Learning & AI
Skill Profile
Chunking, retrieval, reranking, hybrid search, RAG pipeline quality assessment
Roles
3
where this skill appears
Levels
5
structured growth path
Mandatory requirements
11
the other 4 optional
Machine Learning & AI
LLM & Generative AI
3/17/2026
Choose your current level and compare expectations. The items below show what to cover to advance to the next level.
The table shows how skill depth grows from Junior to Principal. Click a row to see details.
| Role | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Product Engineer | Understands RAG fundamentals: document chunking, embedding generation, vector search, and context injection. Sets up basic RAG pipelines using LangChain or LlamaIndex for product Q&A features. | |
| LLM Engineer | Understands RAG pipeline components: embedding models, vector databases, and retrieval strategies. Implements basic document indexing and semantic search with FAISS or Pinecone for LLM augmentation. | |
| NLP Engineer | Required | Knows RAG basics: retrieval, augmentation, generation. Applies simple RAG pipelines for NLP tasks: searching relevant documents and generating context-based answers. |
| Role | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Product Engineer | Builds production RAG systems with hybrid search (dense + sparse retrieval), re-ranking, and metadata filtering. Implements evaluation frameworks measuring retrieval relevance and answer faithfulness for user-facing features. | |
| LLM Engineer | Implements advanced RAG patterns: query decomposition, hypothetical document embeddings (HyDE), and multi-index retrieval. Optimizes chunk size and overlap for domain-specific corpora and evaluates retrieval quality with RAGAS metrics. | |
| NLP Engineer | Required | Independently designs RAG systems for NLP: hybrid search, reranking, query expansion. Configures chunking strategies for different document types, evaluates quality via RAGAS. |
| Role | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Product Engineer | Required | Designs enterprise RAG architecture with multi-tenant knowledge bases, access control integration, and real-time document ingestion. Implements agentic RAG with iterative retrieval and self-correcting answer generation for complex product workflows. |
| LLM Engineer | Required | Designs scalable RAG platforms with graph-augmented retrieval, contextual compression, and adaptive chunking strategies. Implements knowledge graph integration for structured reasoning and mentors team on RAG evaluation methodology and hallucination mitigation. |
| NLP Engineer | Required | Designs production RAG architectures: multi-index retrieval, agentic RAG, self-reflective RAG. Optimizes quality through advanced reranking, query decomposition, and citation verification. |
| Role | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Product Engineer | Required | Defines RAG Architecture strategy at the team/product level. Establishes standards and best practices. Conducts reviews. |
| LLM Engineer | Required | Defines RAG Architecture strategy at team/product level. Establishes standards and best practices. Conducts reviews. |
| NLP Engineer | Required | Defines RAG strategy for the NLP team. Establishes evaluation framework, retrieval and generation best practices, and quality assurance standards for RAG-based NLP products. |
| Role | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| AI Product Engineer | Required | Defines RAG Architecture strategy at the organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects. |
| LLM Engineer | Required | Defines RAG Architecture strategy at organizational level. Establishes enterprise approaches. Mentors leads and architects. |
| NLP Engineer | Required | Shapes enterprise RAG strategy for the NLP platform. Defines architectural patterns, knowledge management standards, and retrieval infrastructure at organizational level. |