About RSE

What is a Research Software Engineer?

Are you wondering what a research software engineer is, or if you are one? The definition given by the The United States Research Software Engineer Association is:

We like an inclusive definition of Research Software Engineers to encompass those who regularly use expertise in programming to advance research. This includes researchers who spend a significant amount of time programming, full-time software engineers writing code to solve research problems, and those somewhere in-between. We aspire to apply the skills and practices of software development to research to create more robust, manageable, and sustainable research software.

A bit of history

Our initiative builds on 10 years of work by others.

The Software Sustainability Institute conducted a study in 2014 to access the importance of Software in UK Research. The conclusion was that around 70% of researchers said they could not carry out their research without research software¹. Another finding was that most researchers who develop research software have no formal training in software development. This blog post discusses the results of this study in more detail.

The first action taken to highlight the special role of the programmers who develop research software was to create a new and unique name: Research Software Engineers.

We recommend this article for a full overview.