Linking Professional Skills to RSE Career Paths

This is a short or working paper that was written in response to a call for the RSE-HPC-2020 workshop (https://us-rse.org/rse-hpc-2020/) which will is part of the ACM and IEEE SC20 conference (https://sc20.supercomputing.org/).

The paper argues that the terminology used to describe job related skills in computing and more specifically in research software engineering (RSE) is rapidly changing and that the terminology is not easily understood by people who work with RSEs such as HR professionals or policy makers. In deed the terminology is not necessarily understood by RSE in different specialisms. It goes on to argue that a framework that links skills to the RSE occupation is needed both for RSEs who wish to alter their career to fit the changing needs and for professionals who must interact with RSEs.

Such a framework could be developed by combining knowledge gained from analysing job adverts using natural language processing (NPL), interviewing RSE specialist and building on known glossaries created by RSEs. As the computing technologies and the associated skills change rapidly this framework and its associated ontology the analysis would need to continue until a time when the changes are no longer so significant.