Who am I?

The Software Sustainability Institute

www.software.ac.uk

"Research Software Engineer"

- Collaborations Workshop,

22 March 2012,

Queen's College Oxford

~10,000 RSEs worldwide

Image courtesy Ian Cosden

RSE Conference 2022

What problems are left?

• We need recognition within individual universities and research organisations

• We need embedded RSEs to  reap the same benefits as those in RSE Groups

• We need recognition for software and its role in research

• We need RSEs... a lot more of them!

How do you get more RSEs?

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Survey

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSex-MGoVELcdiGvo1_q-NjhIlTS-zQ_x_4kK0JtUwEthxduAA/viewform

UNIVERSE-HPC is a new project run in the UK to understand RSE skills requirements and provide training to meet them.

https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2018-03-12-what-do-we-know-about-rses-results-our-international-surveys

Analysis of RSE skills

• More of an art than a science
  • Very, very subjective at times
  • Longest response: 388 characters
  • Shortest response: 3 characters
• The first pass is conducted in Google sheets
  • 1050 skills from 411 people
• Analysis is reengineered into Python

The joys of free text

Results:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14SdhP3clfmtv6RDfcK0oUCjOm07k8mdykfY2d14baiE/edit?usp=sharing

"n/a I have all the skills"

"negotiate for jobs in a discipline that doesn't value software"

"how to herd cats... I mean researchers..."

"A new back: mine is stiff"

Interruptions welcome!

All categorised responses

Is it all technical?

Technical skills

Management skills

Languages, packages and libraries

Soft skills

Domains & fields

How do we provide these skills?

• Historically, RSEs have learned on the job

• Demand for RSEs requires a more scalable and reliable way of training new RSEs
• Masters modules exist at various universities, as do materials such as intermediate Software Carpentry
• We need to develop courses starting from undergraduate, Masters and PhD, and continued professional development
• Secondments/placments with industry
• We could also introduce more junior roles and provide on the job training

Survey

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSex-MGoVELcdiGvo1_q-NjhIlTS-zQ_x_4kK0JtUwEthxduAA/viewform

UNIVERSE-HPC is a new project run in the UK to understand RSE skills requirements and provide training to meet them.

How can you help?

• Check my results!
• Contact RSSE Africa, or any of the national associations, with information about courses and other training opportunities
• Keep an eye out for requests for training course creation from Universe HPC
• Promote the RSE career to everyone you know!