Research Software Engineers Association

Welcome to the UKRSE Association website.  We are an association working to create a community and raise awareness of the UK’s Research Software Engineers.   We campaign for the recognition and adoption of the RSE role within academia along with the need for appropriate reward and career opportunities for RSEs.   We organise regular events to allow Research Software Engineers to meet, exchange knowledge and collaborate.

Joining the RSE Community is easy. Sign up to our mailing list to receive notices about events, our campaign, job vacancies from other Research Software Groups and enquiries from other RSEs looking to get help or create new collaborations.

Influencing academia to recognise the fundamental role that software plays in today’s research.

A growing number of people in academia combine expertise in programming with an intricate understanding of research. Although this combination of skills is extremely valuable, these people lack a formal place in the academic system. This means there is no easy way to recognise their contribution, to reward them, or to represent their views. Without a name, it is difficult for people to rally around a cause, so we created the term Research Software Engineer. We are now working to raise awareness of the role and bring the community together.

Some Research Software Engineers start off as researchers who spend time developing software to progress their research. Because they enjoy this work and have invested in developing specialist skills, they continue to focus on software and its use in research. Others start off from a more conventional software-development background and are drawn to research by the challenge of using software to further research.

The attraction of being a Research Software Engineer is similar to that of being a researcher: the role attracts people who want to know how the world works. The Research Software Engineer works with researchers to gain an understanding of the problems they face, and then develops, maintains and extends software to provide the answers.

Regardless of your formal job title, if you answer yes to many of the following questions, you are doing the work of a Research Software Engineer:

1. Are you employed to develop software for research?
2. Are you spending more time developing software than conducting research?
3. Are you employed as a postdoctoral researcher, even though you predominantly work on software development?
4. Are you the person who does computers in your research group?
5. Are you sometimes not named on research papers despite playing a fundamental part in developing the software used to create them?
6. Do you lack the metrics needed to progress your academic career, like papers and conference presentations, despite having made a significant contribution through software?