Working in Harmony: Towards Integrating RSEs into Multi-Disciplinary CSE Teams
This addresses the problem of inefficient collaboration in scientific software development for researchers and engineers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing discussions about RSEs without introducing new methods or data.
The paper tackles the challenge of integrating research software engineers (RSEs) into multi-disciplinary computational science and engineering (CSE) teams to bridge the gap between CSE and software engineering, arguing for systematic investigation into teaming strategies to foster a more productive relationship.
Within the rapidly diversifying field of computational science and engineering (CSE), research software engineers (RSEs) represent a shift towards the adoption of mainstream software engineering tools and practices into scientific software development. An unresolved challenge is the need to effectively integrate RSEs and their expertise into multi-disciplinary scientific software teams. There has been a long-standing "chasm" between the domains of CSE and software engineering, and the emergence of RSEs as a professional identity within CSE presents an opportunity to finally bridge that divide. For this reason, we argue there is an urgent need for systematic investigation into multi-disciplinary teaming strategies which could promote a more productive relationship between the two fields.