I'm an RSE and the president of the Society of Research Software Engineering (https://society-rse.org), a small grass-roots registered charity in the UK that acts as a home for RSEs in the UK and internationally. We came about from the organisers of the RSE conference (https://rsecon2022.society-rse.org) and from the early pioneers in the naming and recognition of RSEs.
The other comments in this thread indeed point out the issue of poor salary compared with industry, this is a problem that I feel will persist. Historically, the benefit of working at a University over a company has been greater freedom, better benefits and (at least for me) the knowledge that you;re working for the public benefit. Unfortunately, the benefits are being reduced as time goes on as Universities are under greater financial stress.
My role as an RSE at the University of Bristol has been in a primarily teaching position for the last few years, where I have been training PhD students, postdocs and research staff (all the way up to and including professors) in both the basics of programming but also testing, version control, profiling etc. My role is funded indirectly by the government as it is recognised by the funding agencies that RSE skills are essential for modern research and they are putting their money where their mouth is by funding more software projects, fellowships and training programmes in this area.
If you think that you'd like to know more about getting involved as an as RSE, or if you work as one an would like to meet like-minded people then you can join as a member of the Society, join our Slack channel or our mailing list (https://society-rse.org/join-us/) or find out how you can get involved (https://society-rse.org/community/get-involved/).
The other comments in this thread indeed point out the issue of poor salary compared with industry, this is a problem that I feel will persist. Historically, the benefit of working at a University over a company has been greater freedom, better benefits and (at least for me) the knowledge that you;re working for the public benefit. Unfortunately, the benefits are being reduced as time goes on as Universities are under greater financial stress.
My role as an RSE at the University of Bristol has been in a primarily teaching position for the last few years, where I have been training PhD students, postdocs and research staff (all the way up to and including professors) in both the basics of programming but also testing, version control, profiling etc. My role is funded indirectly by the government as it is recognised by the funding agencies that RSE skills are essential for modern research and they are putting their money where their mouth is by funding more software projects, fellowships and training programmes in this area.
If you think that you'd like to know more about getting involved as an as RSE, or if you work as one an would like to meet like-minded people then you can join as a member of the Society, join our Slack channel or our mailing list (https://society-rse.org/join-us/) or find out how you can get involved (https://society-rse.org/community/get-involved/).