Research Software Engineer Competencies

Research Software Engineer (RSE) is a professional role with a history of over 10 years. As the name suggests, RSEs contribute to both research and software development.

Competencies

The core competencies of RSEs can be categorized as follows:

Software/Technical skills

• Data management
• Data science
• Software design and development
• Computing infrastructure and systems

Research skills

• Domain expertise
• Research cycle
• Publication
• Ethical, legal and regulatory responsibilities

Communication skills

• Teamwork
• Teaching
• Project management
• Personal and interpersonal skills
• Leadership

Proficiency levels

• Foundational (Novice)
• Intermediate (Junior RSE)
• Advanced (Senior RSE)
• Expert (Principal RSE)

Attribution

This repository is a remix based on the following resources:

1. Teaching and Learning Research Software Engineering. Goth et al. (2024). GitHub repository: https://github.com/CaptainSifff/paper_teaching-learning-RSE/.
2. Nenadic, A., Reed, P., Horsfall, D., Goel, A., Chadwick, E., Hogan, E., D'Alessandro, A., de Boer, L., Cooper, J., & Katz, D. (2026). DIRECT competencies framework for digital Research Technical Professionals (v2.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19485964.
3. European Commission (2025), ResearchComp: The European Competence Framework for Researchers - Research and innovation. https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/jobs-research/researchcomp-european-competence-framework-researchers_en.

License

All content in this repository is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0).