Depending on the definition of RSE, I may or may not have been one.
The company I worked for was a Synchrotron Light Source; I worked on software for data collection on X-Ray beamlines. I would say that only about half of those in the same role as me had a PhD.
Moving away from data collection to analysis, the fraction of PhDs went up, but only reached 1.0 when considering the sub-group specialising in structural biology.
For many years I worked in a high profile research institute (neuroscience) as an RSE without a PhD. Still don't have one, and that's okay (for the path I'm on). Quite a few of the other RSEs in the institute don't have one either. In total I'd say maybe 50% didn't have a PhD.
I'm one who started with only a BS, and I'm at a top-20 public university in the US. It depends on your PIs, but I've definitely been appreciated on many of the projects I've worked on (e.g., listed with 2nd most ownership percentage on invention disclosures, which also won a campus-wide yearly award).
Admittedly, my path was convoluted; I started as a engineer to help with non-research software at a large lab, and got pulled on to projects via reputation. But I was replacing a Master's student who was essentially at the same academic level as me anyway. It does pay less, but I made the tradeoff for the quality of projects, which was worth more to me at this point in my career. It's still much more than I need, just not at industry levels.
I found a role like this. I love it, with the caveat that doing research, software dev, and some lead-type stuff is a lot of work. Though my hours are capped at 40, I probably am thinking about it on some level at least fifty hours.
Ok well I can fix that. Hi, I'm a research software engineer and I don't have a PhD.
I'm in Europe. My salary is definitely better than the PhD students' salaries, and I have a proper adult pension as that's a legal requirement here. My salary is approximately equal to what a graduate might earn 1-2 years after graduating in the local market, so doesn't match my actual experience, but I accepted the post for pandemic-induced reasons. Certainly the salary does not, nor will ever, compare to levels.fyi/FAANG type jobs or a large corp in country.
However it is true that my position officially is very much a curiosity. We don't have a defined RSE type role, so the slot I fit in is "staying on to help out on project after graduating". My job is a fixed term contract that can only be renewed a certain number of times and I'm approaching that limit soon. There isn't any viable track to joining the ranks of researchers - I would have to do a masters first, and this ironically would require doing an internship, in spite of the fact I have more actual industry (non-university) experience than the entire lab combined.
I'm also not sure if my lab head bent the rules or not on hiring me - it might be the case that I am supposed to have a PhD or at least a masters.
I would agree with top level post in most points. It is interesting work, but I don't "belong" anywhere in "the system". This might change in 10-20 years. Artefact evaluation is very much becoming a thing in systems research, because being able to reproduce other people's work is quite important, and very occasionally you will stumble upon papers whose claims are, ah, more expansive than the associated github project can fulfil. As more research relies on software that graduate students are simply ill-equipped to write (by virtue of having no experience in anything and by being taught by professors most of whom no experience writing production code) the role of an RSE might become more important in time, but like anything it'll be a slow change.
> My salary is approximately equal to what a graduate might earn 1-2 years after graduating in the local market
When talking about the "local market" in Europe one needs to take into account the large number of "dark matter devs" that are working remotely for SV companies, at SV salaries. They simply won't ever show up for interviews at local companies.
In this case then I mean local local market, not devs working remotely for SV. I am aware. One of my friends does this and earns 2x what I do, in cash.
Moving away from data collection to analysis, the fraction of PhDs went up, but only reached 1.0 when considering the sub-group specialising in structural biology.