[mauro3]

There are efforts under way to improve the standing of scientific programmers, for instance the UK initiative described in this post: http://software-carpentry.org/blog/2015/06/what-is-a-researc... .

There are now fellowships in the UK specifically aimed at scientific programmers: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/rsefellowships/ . Even so, currently there no real career path for scientific programmers. Hopefully this will change in the future!