New Paper available at F1000Research: Foundational Competencies and Responsibilities of a Research Software Engineer
Authors: Jean-Noël Grad and the TeachingRSE working group The term Research Software Engineer (RSE) was coined a decade ago to describe individuals in academic and industrial settings who maintain and extend research software systems as their main activity, while also actively contributing to scientific research. Their role is defined by a wide range of skills and competencies that allows them to participate in the co-design of research requirements, in the publication of scientific papers, and to lead the development of scientific software. Specialised roles include bioinformatics, cheminformatics, HPC-RSEs, data-focused RSEs, and many more. This flexibility makes the definition of the RSE role challenging. The TeachingRSE working group set out to better understand and identify the foundational competencies of RSEs through multiple workshops over the span of two years, collecting feedback from practitioners from various scientific disciplines and several European countries, in collaboration with the German Informatics Society. Core competencies and transferable skills were identified and grouped into those that relate directly to software, those that are more research-related, and those that are communication-focused. The resulting paper “Foundational Competencies and Responsibilities of a Research Software Engineer” characterises the RSE role in various settings and disciplines, and describes RSEs as specialists with a high-quality software engineering knowledge, an understanding of the research environment (potentially working as a direct contributor to research itself), and the ability to communicate well and work highly effectively with researchers who may not have a computational background and IT savvy personnel who may not have a research background. A shorter version was published in IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering. The term RSE has become more widely accepted in recent years and research institutions are now hiring RSEs to provide the vitally important skills that they need to support modern research. RSEs can bridge the gap between software specialists and HPC practitioners on one side, and academic and industrial users on the other side, a synergy that is currently being leveraged by the UNIVERSE-HPC project to design a HPC-RSE curriculum. RSEs are supported by national RSE associations, the European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence (Horizon Europe Programme), and can receive formal training in Bachelor and Master programmes. These initiatives mirror work currently undertaken by EuroHPC JU to train the next generation of HPC experts, such as National Competence Centres, the Virtual Training Academy, and the European Master Programme for HPC. This blog post is adapted from the original at deRSE.