Who are research software engineers? Part I
The first time I encountered the job title "Research Software Engineer" was probably in LinkedIn job descriptions from Sage Bionetworks, right around the time I was starting grad school. I've seen it a dozen times since then, but it's always in the context of the life sciences (another title with a somewhat similar job scope is "Bioinformatics Engineer"). RSE job postings almost always comes from the same few organizations, if not Sage Bionetworks again.
It’s no surprise that it likely takes a particular type of organization—one that was "founded out of a sense of outrage and disbelief in the selfish, narrow practices of early 21st-century biomedical research," often referred to as the "Medical Industrial Complex"—to be a trailblazer and early adopter of hiring Research Software Engineers (RSEs). Sage Bionetworks is the creator of platforms like Synapse and BRIDGE - platforms that encourage patient and broader public involvement in research. It requires a specific set of organizational values to establish a particular type of role and a sustainable career path focused on creating and maintaining reliable research software and platforms.
There is not overwhelming representation of bioinformatics scientists or bioinformatics engineers at the US Research Software Engineering Conference 2024, which is surprising *to me* because bioinformatics, and more broadly the biomedical sciences, seem to have a longer and more prominent history of discussing data-sharing practices - as early as 1997 (i.e., the Bermuda Principles) - compared to other fields. At USRSE 24, there isn't any single field that stands out prominently. I've met RSEs in fields that range from digital humanities to computational chemistry. From my conversations so far, RSEs view more mature and developed communities like bioinformatics as a subset of RSE careers. Fundamentally, the common denominator is creating reliable research software for scientific computing.
It's possible that folks with RSE job scopes in bioinformatics and life sciences have established pathways to demonstrate the value of their work in domain-specific venues (like ISBM, and the nextflow summit) so there isn't a pressing need to participate in the broader RSE ecosystem. That said, the RSE career path is incredibly young - there's a lot of excitement and opportunity to shape its future!
We can expect a convergence of fields, and there's a lot to learn from more established communities (e.g. compbio, comp social science) and geographies (e.g. the UK, where the term "RSE" was coined at Queens' College Oxford 💅👑).