On September 10, 2020, the US-RSE Organization held a community call on “Hiring and Interviewing For RSE Positions.” We organized the call as an open community discussion among RSE hiring managers, practicing RSEs, and aspiring RSEs (e.g. students and researchers), with about 50 participants. The primary goal of the call was to open a discussion using the US-RSE community to help both sides of the hiring equation. RSEs and those who employ RSEs. Through the discussion, RSEs gained a better understanding of a challenging and important process.

Photo by Antonia Cozacu, Jan Philipp Dietrich, de-RSE e.V. (CC BY 4.0).

In this bi-monthly newsletter, we share recent, current, and planned activities of the US-RSE Association, and related news that we think is of interest to US-RSE members. Newsletters are also available on our website alongside the growing resources and information on the US-RSE Association. A sign-up option for our newsletter is available here.

The initial US-RSE Steering Committee came together to bootstrap the US-RSE Association, and as the Association grows and matures, the current Steering Committee recognizes that it’s time to move to a more formal governance model to provide a stable long-term foundation for the association and to open up the Steering Committee to new members.

Given recent current events around the novel coronavirus outbreak, many individuals and organizations have been forced to adapt. For the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE), this meant the unfortunate postponement of an in-person community building workshop that was to take place April 23-24th, 2020. In order to keep up the community’s strong momentum, we decided to host a virtual workshop that could be attended from the comfort and safety of our own homes. While not aiming to replace the in-person workshop, this virtual workshop format came with some benefits of its own, such as additional participation by those who would not have been able to attend the in-person workshop, reduced environmental impact from not having to travel, and less disruption in the lives of attendees.