This document is designed to outline standard practice for working with RSEs at Warwick. Warwick RSEs/RSE Groups are in no way bound to the contents of this document, but it can be considered the fall back if no other arrangements are made.

‘A Research Software Engineer (RSE) combines professional software engineering expertise with an intimate understanding of research.’ – Society of Research Software Engineering

RSEs are specialists in producing high quality code for research. The blend of research background with software focus will confer a higher standard of code output to your project. The benefits of this include:

• Code that is easier to share and maintain.
• Code that is of a publishable quality increasing the number of research outputs.
• Reduced chance of a software bug invalidating results or delaying progress.
• Interdisciplinary experience resulting in knowledge transfer to you project.

Funding councils are beginning to expect some measure of RSE time or support to be included in grants where the project has a significant software component.

For a full list of activities and examples of previous RSE project involvement please see [LINK HERE]

There are multiple RSE groups at Warwick who work in different departments, review the RSE groups page on the ‘warwick.ac.uk/research-computing’ site to see what groups exist.

The cost of RSE time will vary between RSEs. There are currently 2 grades, 6 (RSE) and 7 (Senior RSE). Which specific RSE is used will vary by availability, skillset, and requirement. RSEs will be costed at full FTE at a time resolution of a day with a minimum contractable time of 2 weeks (10 days). This cost will reflect the usual expectations of annual leave. Requirements of specific funders will be accommodated where necessary.

RSEs are academic collaborators on your project, as with a research collaborator such as a postdoc an RSE will not spend 100% of the time contracted directly on the project. Additional uses of time will be, for example, continuing professional development, general administration, and setup of new projects. These activities will have benefited your project prior to the actual contracted start date.

If you have a grant with money that can be used for staff time if one of the existing groups has capacity and relevant skills, you may be able to hire an RSE from the pool of RSEs this is usually simple but there is no guarantee of availability.

RSE time can be written into grants at the RSE group level or at the individual RSE if they have a particular skillset that is required. If the RSE is this specific it is expected that if they have the choice of becoming a Co-Investigator on the grant.

Grant applications with a high RSE FTE and/or long duration:

Where a grant may use significant of RSE time if there is no RSE availability then we can hire a new RSE to the team if the grant is of sufficient length. Usually, high proportions of FTE of RSE time will be split appropriately across multiple people reducing the reliance on one person and increasing the interdisciplinary knowledge transfer.

Grant application with a low RSE FTE and/or short duration:

If a grant had low RSE FTE or not at sufficient length to hire an RSE then effort will be made to accommodate the project within the workload within existing RSE projects. Due to the nature of grant funding the RSE pool may be over or under loaded at any time. We aim to maintain capacity in the pool to adapt to the situation as best as possible.

The RSE teams have some capacity to take on Ad Hoc support free of charge.RSE teams are not obliged to take on your projectbut may do so if they have an interest in the technology or field. Preference will be given to projects where the support given will:

• Lead to more efficient use of Warwick Compute infrastructure.
• Enable applications for grants that will include future RSE work.
• Ready code for high profile publications where the code is a research output and the RSE will be accredited for their contribution.
• Provide a foundation for commercialisation or investment that will involve future RSE involvement.
• The researchers department has significant share in the RTP platform where the RSE is based.

RSEs are generally considered to be collaborators on your project. They bring a skillset and may inform or modify the direction of the software aspect of the project. They should be included on research outputs such as papers. We also strongly encourage code to be open source and citable as a separate research output.

After the initial engagement term with the RSE the project will be handed to the researcher. At this point the RSE will no longer be required to support the project, testing and bug fixing will have been included in the initial workplan. In the event of a production code or an ongoing service will make up part of the research longer term funding at a lower % would be expected for the RSE to engage in ad-hoc maintenance. Code written for research projects by RSEs unless specifically otherwise stated comes with no guarantee or acceptance of liability.