[tostitos1979]

Microsoft Research has RSDEs ... research software design engineers. IBM Research also has a research software engineer position, with its own career progression track. These folks are generally fantastic developers who have been professional software engineers some point in their careers. Moreover, I have never personally seen a case where a research engineer was not put on a paper for being just a coder.

It is problematic when a team of scientists collaborate with a product group (not research software engineers but regular developers). In the limited projects I've been involved in, we ask if any product group engineer wants to collaborate on a paper we are writing. No one is typically interested and we would at least add them to acknowledgements. I found product group developers were interested in collaborating for patent submissions. I definitely don't want to generalize but take this as a data point.

[Eridrus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that being an RSDE at MSR was still a dead-end position.

FWIW product engineers usually get bonuses for patents, so there's the obvious incentive of $5k in your pocket.

[tellarin]

I made the switch from Researcher to RSDE and I'm not sure what you're talking about.

There are plenty of Principal RSDEs and some become Managers of technical leaders of teams, which sometimes even include researchers.

But of course, the track is not as clear and common as for plain Researcher or SDE (in a product team).

PS: As far as I know, the patent bonus are there for all (though I can't comment on values).

[seanmcdirmid]

If we are talking Redmond, I've known plenty of RSDEs who have been promoted to manage their own groups. They also have the option to transfer back into a product development team, which can be very difficult for us pure researchers.

[Qworg]

Things are changing.

Also, if you're on a patent, you get the cube (and the cash).

[5olidor]

That makes sense, thanks