Disclaimer: I am one of the trustees of the mentioned charity, The Society of Research Software Engineering. You say that you don't see it having much "differe

Disclaimer: I am one of the trustees of the mentioned charity, The Society of Research Software Engineering. You say that you don't see it having much "difference with regard status and salary". The problem here is two-fold. Firstly, salaries at UK universities are set on a band structure and so an RSE will earn a comparable amount to a postdoc or lecturer. These aren't positions that are known for high wages and historically the reason that people work in research is not for a higher salary. As for status, I can see that the creation of the Research Software Engineer title (since about 2012) has done great good for improving the status of people with those skills. Before they were "just" postdocs with not many papers but now they can focus on doing what they do best and have career paths which recognise their skills. My role (at the University of Bristol - https://www.bristol.ac.uk/acrc/research-software-engineering/ https://www.bristol.ac.uk/acrc/research-software-engineering...) is focused almost entirely on teaching. I'm not trying to create a new band of specialists who would identify as RSEs but rather provide technical competency for people working in research so that the code they write is better. There is a spectrum of RSEs from primarily research-focused postcode who write code to support their work along to full-time RSEs whose job is to support others with their research (almost a contractor-type model). We need to have impact all the way along that spectrum, from training at one end to careers and status at the other. For more info on the history of the role, there's a great article at https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2016-08-17-not-so-brief-history-research-software-engineers-0 https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2016-08-17-not-so-brief-hist... written by one of the founding members of the Society of Research Software Engineering.