Patrick Schmitz
Associate Director, Research IT
University of California, Berkeley
The role of Research IT (computing, data, and related infrastructure and services) has grown rapidly, and it has increasing and crosscutting importance to the university research and educational mission. However, despite its growing importance, Research IT is still an emerging professional domain. Research IT professionals (e.g., research software engineers, research IT facilitators and consultants, research computing and data specialists) often lack a clear job family system. There are few appropriate job descriptions and classifications and very few clear paths for professional advancement. This causes both recruitment and retention issues for university staff who deploy and support IT services and solutions advancing campus research and instruction. A 2018 workshop hosted by the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) developed a baseline framework for a job family classification and advancement system for Research IT that can be adapted and deployed in a range of different research settings (R1, R2, and R3 universities, smaller colleges and universities, and research labs). The framework is being shared and discussed across a range of research IT organizations and communities, and has received positive response and adoption. CaRCC working groups continue to develop and expand the ideas (e.g., working with HR organizations to develop formal job classification families, and describing a range of career paths for these roles) and strive to present and disseminate the findings to the larger community. This session will present the framework and how it evolved, examples of how it is being used, and the ongoing work to refine and expand the associated resources.
