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The term has been widely adopted and there are a number of high-level definitions of what an RSE is. However, the roles of RSEs vary depending on the institutional context they work in. At one end of the spectrum, RSE roles may look similar to a traditional research role. At the other extreme, they resemble that of a software engineer in industry. Most RSE roles inhabit the space between these two extremes. Therefore, providing a straightforward, comprehensive definition of what an RSE does and what experience, skills and competencies are required to become one is challenging. In this community paper we define the broad notion of what an RSE is, explore the different types of work they undertake, and define a list of foundational competencies as well as values that outline the general profile of an RSE. These foundational skills are encountered to a large extent within the skill sets of current RSEs in Germany and beyond, and we propose them as a starting point for aspiring RSEs to shape their technical profile. Further research and training can build upon this foundation of skills and focus on various aspects in greater detail. We expect that graduates and practitioners will have a larger and more diverse set of skills than outlined here. On this basis, we elaborate on the progression of these skills along different dimensions. We look at specific types of RSE roles, propose recommendations for organisations, give examples of future specialisations, and detail how existing curricula fit into this framework.<\/ns3:p>","DOI":"10.12688\/f1000research.157778.2","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,8]],"date-time":"2025-09-08T09:25:09Z","timestamp":1757323509000},"page":"1429","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.12688\/f1000research.crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Foundational Competencies and Responsibilities of a Research Software Engineer: Current State and Suggestions for Future 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Here is what we did in detail:  ## Reviewer 1: Scope  &gt; Scope: How large is the scope of this paper? &gt; Is it meant to encompass RSEs around the globe or focused primarily on European RSEs? &gt; Also is it meant to be aspirational (e.g., all RSEs should have these) &gt; or does it represent the current state of RSEs (e.g., most RSEs already have these competencies)?  We acknowledge that the scope and the perspective might be confusing in parts. We have extended the abstract and the introduction to clarify that the foundational competencies are based on what is often encountered in Germany and beyond, while aiming to be guidelines for aspiring RSEs. We have also clarified that our recommendations draw from experiences in Germany, Europe, and the US, but are not specific to a particular region. A subtitle was added to better reflect the scope and aims of the paper.  ## Reviewer 1: Related work  &gt; - Section 2 (Related Work): &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; - Related to scope question: If this is intended to be more widespread, I recommend including references to &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; INTERSECT (https:\/\/intersect-training.org), &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; BSSw (https:\/\/bssw.io), and &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; IDEAS-productivity (https:\/\/ideas-productivity.org)  We have now added these examples from the USA, which we previously missed. Thank you for reporting these blind spots!  ## Reviewer 1: Section 3 (Values) &gt; I'd push back on the claim that RSEs adhere to the SE Code of Ethics purely because, as stated earlier in the paper, a lot of RSEs don't have classical training and wouldn't even necessarily know that those ethics exist. Do they probably adhere to them accidentally? Yes. But I'd suspect the average RSE couldn't reliably list anything in the SE Code of Ethics. &gt; First paragraph, something is missing here \/ incomplete sentence\/thought: &quot;Central to that code is the RSE's obligation to In addition to the values...&quot; &gt; I had a bit of a hard time following the computer-based modeling paragraphs \/ understanding why a discussion of them was happening until the second to last sentence of the paragraph that starts with &quot;The relationship between initial state...&quot;  - we agree with the reviewer that many RSEs are probably unaware of these code of conducts. However we feel that this is an important aspect for RSEs going forward. They will need at least some basic familiarity with it to support their future work. - add sentences to explain why these values are stated explicitly here even though many practioners will learn about these values by following the examples of their peers and mentors. - reworded the paragraph on computer-based modeling to improve flow. - fixed in markdown version of the paper  ## Reviewer 1 Feedback 4: &gt; can you include a footnote to any digital information on the Paderborn workshop? &gt; Section 4.1.2 - there are multiple research software maturity models\/frameworks that have been proposed that adapt SWLC. See, for example, M. R. Mundt, W. Burgess and D. M. Vigil, &quot;A Tiered Approach to Scientific Software Quality Practices,&quot; in Proceedings of the 2022 Improving Scientific Software Conference (No. NCAR\/TN-574+PROC). doi:10.5065\/98kd-b491 &gt; Section 4.1.5 - I recommend adding a note here for &quot;as applicable,&quot; e.g., some RSEs at some institutions may not be able to share code publicly because of security or institutional requirements (though they should still use whatever they can for version controlling) &gt; Section 4.2.4 - Similar note to 4.1.5; there should be something about &quot;adhering to institutional policies&quot; as well &gt; Section 4.4 (Tasks and Responsibilities) - When talking about RSE communities, it might be worth it to reference some of them, e.g., UK-RSE \/ Soc RSE, deRSE, US-RSE, RSE-AUNZ, RSE Asia, RSSE Africa, etc.  We thank the reviewer for their feedback! In more detail: - We made the original session pads available on zenodo and linked them in the bibliography. &quot;Section 4.1.2 - there are multiple research software maturity models\/frameworks that have been proposed that adapt SWLC. See, for example, M. R. Mundt, W. Burgess and D. M. Vigil, &quot;A Tiered Approach to Scientific Software Quality Practices,&quot; in Proceedings of the 2022 Improving Scientific Software Conference (No. NCAR\/TN-574+PROC). doi:10.5065\/98kd-b491&quot; - We thank the reviewer for this reference and augmented the section on the software life cycle with it. &nbsp; &quot;Section 4.1.5 - I recommend adding a note here for &quot;as applicable,&quot; e.g., some RSEs at some institutions may not be able to share code publicly because of security or institutional requirements (though they should still use whatever they can for version controlling) Section 4.2.4 - Similar note to 4.1.5; there should be something about &quot;adhering to institutional policies&quot; as well&quot; - We qualified it in both sections accordingly.  &quot;Section 4.4 (Tasks and Responsibilities) - When talking about RSE communities, it might be worth it to reference some of them, e.g., UK-RSE \/ Soc RSE, deRSE, US-RSE, RSE-AUNZ, RSE Asia, RSSE Africa, etc.&quot; - We thank the referee for this suggestion, and we took then the opportunity to link to the overview page of the international RSE council, which lists all national groups, and thereby also will be updated in the future.  ## Reviewer 1 Feedback: Section 3.1 &gt;&nbsp; Section 3.1.1 - this almost might be better if phrased as &quot;Data Security&quot; because that's kind of the crux of the paragraph  Good point, we have renamed the section.  &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I notice that &quot;funding methods&quot; is missing from these challenges; there has been a lot of discussion about unreliable funding methods for software and, as a result, RSEs (e.g., https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/stamp\/stamp.jsp?arnumber=6886129, https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/stamp\/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9470770, https:\/\/pure.manchester.ac.uk\/ws\/portalfiles\/portal\/54140648\/StateOfTheNationReport2017.pdf, https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/stamp\/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10071971) &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; There is also a lack of &quot;RSEs being integrated into existing teams and having to fight that team's culture&quot;. Maybe this is too niche to bring up, but it is a challenge that has been spoken about amongst RSE circles (e.g., &quot;How can I get an existing team to change their processes when they are so stuck in their ways?&quot;)  We thank the reviewer for his\/her feedback. We now mention the funding problem in the future work section of the paper. We thank the referee for the additional references, Since we don't feel that is a challenge that has a stronger influence on the education of an RSE than it would have for any other domain scientist.  The Integration into teams is now mentioned in the Tasks-and-Responsibilities section.  ## Reviewer 1 Feedback: Section 5 &gt; Section 5.2 &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I disagree with some of the claims here (e.g., license discussion for Bachelor's degree seems like too much). Generally, though, this section is nice. However... &gt;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not all RSEs have PhDs. Most of them do, yes, but many RSEs who do NOT have PhDs are still wildly successful without having gained the proposed skills as PhD students. How do you address that scenario (i.e., where an RSE stops after a Bachelors, Masters, etc.?)  We agree that a full license discussion would be too much for a Bachelor's degree, we really mean a very basic awareness, e.g. that different licenses exist and may come with obligations like copyleft. This would fit in a more general discussion around good scientific practice as a primer to a Bachelor's thesis. We expanded on what we mean by awareness to hopefully make this clearer.  Sections 5.2 is about RSE skills that academic researchers may need without being or ever becoming RSEs, so this would not be the place to address this issue. We have expanded the introduction to make this distinction clearer. However, we agree that a PhD is not (and should not be) a requirement to work as an RSE and as hinted at in the future work section we are working on composing a curriculum for a Master's degree in RSE.  &gt; Section 5.3 (Project team structures) - there is a gap here: &quot;The single RSE on a team of not-RSEs who does not have a central RSE team connection.&quot; These do exist (sadly).  We have clarified that this type of RSE (alone in a team of non-RSEs) is also meant in the category &quot;Individual RSE (Locally-based)&quot;.  &gt; Section 5.4.1 - formatting weirdness in the Research Skills sub-list (pg 22)  fixed, thanks for reporting!","URL":"https:\/\/f1000research.com\/articles\/13-1429\/v2#referee-comment-14247","order":1,"name":"referee-comment-14247","label":"Referee Comment","group":{"name":"article-reports","label":"Article Reports"}},{"value":"10.5256\/f1000research.173278.r345501, Uwe Schmitt, ETH Zurich, Z\u00fcrich, Zurich, 26 Dec 2024, version 1, indexed","URL":"https:\/\/f1000research.com\/articles\/13-1429\/v1#referee-response-345501","order":2,"name":"referee-response-345501","label":"Referee Report","group":{"name":"article-reports","label":"Article Reports"}},{"value":"<b>Florian Goth<\/b>; \n<i>Posted: 18 Jul 2025<\/i>; Dear reviewer, we thank you for your constructive feedback and have used it for an improved version, that will be public here shortly. Here is how we adapted the manuscript in detail:  ## Reviewer 2: Section 3(Values) &gt; This sentence appears to be corrupted due to editing:  &gt; \u201cCentral to that code is the RSE\u2019s obligation to In addition to the &gt; values for good scientific practice commit to the health, safety and welfare of the public and act in the interest of society, their employer and their clients.\u201d  &gt; \u201cRSEs also adhere to the SE Code of Ethics\u201d: As much as I agree with the proposed values, I would prefer the subjunctive\/conjunctive form here, as used in other parts of the document. The teaching of these values could be strengthened in the later section proposing bachelor and master curricula.   - corrupted sentence is fixed in markdown version of the paper - changed &quot;RSEs also adhere to the SE Code of Ethics...&quot; to &quot;RSEs also need to adhere to...&quot; to indicate that this is an aspiration - good point to refer back to values from the example curriculum. We have expanded the example curriculum accordingly.  ## Reviewer 2 (GH: #395) Reviewer 2 Feedback: page 14 bottom &gt; I recommend to separate the following two paragraphs:  &gt; RSEs are also mentoring colleagues (see also Section 3.1.2). This necessitates giving good advice that fits to a project\u2019s &gt; stage in its life cycle, thereby requiring knowledge of ( SWLC), and its context in its research domain and thus ( RC). &gt; END OF PARAGRAPH HERE &gt; Research software can often start out as a tool to answer a personal research question, becoming more important &gt; when other researchers start to rely on it. At the other end of the scale, research software can sometimes underpin key &gt; processes that deal with critical questions such as weather forecasting or medical diagnosis.  - We added a line break at the indicated position.  ## Reviewer 2: &gt; Indentation of the bullet points after \u201cResearch skills\u201d seems to be broken.  Thanks for the feedback, We fixed the indentation in 5.4.1. While at it, we also regenerated the table of contents for F1000.  ## Reviewer 2: &gt; The row \u201cSLWC\u201d mentions \u201cbus factors\u201d several times and may need explanation, or should be added to the glossary.  We checked, the bus factor is referenced in the glossary. We have used the opportunity, to include an html link to the glossary here.","URL":"https:\/\/f1000research.com\/articles\/13-1429\/v2#referee-comment-14248","order":3,"name":"referee-comment-14248","label":"Referee Comment","group":{"name":"article-reports","label":"Article Reports"}},{"value":"FG acknowledges funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through the SFB 1170 \u201cTocotronics\u201d, project Z03 - project number 258499086 as well as financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany\u2019s Excellence Strategy through the W\u00fcrzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence on Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter \u2013 ct.qmat (EXC 2147, project-id 390858490).\r\n\r\nMB acknowledges support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany\u2019s Excellence Strategy \u2013 EXC 2120\/1 \u2013 390831618. LJC acknowledges support from the NFDI4DS consortium funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) - project number 460234259.\r\n\r\nJC acknowledges support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI-EPSRC) under grants EP\/R025460\/1, EP\/W035731\/1 and EP\/Y530608\/1.\r\n\r\nJNG acknowledges funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - project number 391126171 (PI: Holm), from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesmin- isteriums f\u00fcr Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) under the funding code 16HPC095, and from the European Union \u2013 this work has received funding from the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) and countries participating in the project under grant agreement No 101093169.\r\n\r\nDK is funded by the Scientific Software Center which is  part of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments.\r\n\r\nMM is funded by the SiVeGCS Project.\r\n\r\nMS would like to thank Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts and the Federal Government and the Heads of Government of the L\u00e4nder, as well as the Joint Science Conference (GWK), for their funding and support within the framework of the NFDI4Ing consortium. Part of this work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) - project number 442146713. Part of this work was funded by the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts - cluster project Clean Circles. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.","order":4,"name":"grant-information","label":"Grant Information"},{"value":"This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.","order":0,"name":"copyright-info","label":"Copyright"}]}}