This blog is part of the Research Software Camp: Careers and Skills in Research Software series.
ARC is UCL’s research, innovation & service centre for the tools, practices, systems and people that enable computational science and digital scholarship. Formed in August 2021 as an evolution of the Research IT Services unit within UCL’s Information Services Division (ISD), we are now an explicitly hybrid independent department, with both professional services (PS) and academic missions. We provide advanced, reliable, and secure digital research infrastructure – including hardware, software, data, and skills – to researchers in UCL and beyond. We are also a laboratory for research, teaching, and innovation in compute, data, and software-intensive research methods.
A key aim with the hybrid nature of ARC has always been to provide a home for digital research technical professionals – who support and collaborate in the delivery of team-based research, but don’t fully fit into traditional PS or academic career pathways. We seek to provide outstanding career development opportunities for these staff, now all on permanent contracts, so that they can apply their skills to cutting-edge research problems for the greatest public benefit.
Alongside wider work within UCL on career frameworks, when forming ARC we therefore sought to harmonise the many custom job descriptions in use for staff in different teams and roles into a coherent framework that could form the basis of career pathways for personal development and progression. This was done through an extensive co-creation process with staff. While the leadership team had ideas for what the structure could look like, we wanted to ensure that everyone felt they fit within one of the job families and that their current role was at the correct grade (and salary). The text for each job description was developed within a wiki, and both comments and direct edits were encouraged from all staff.
To ensure we had a comprehensive set of professions that covered all the activities within ARC, we settled on five pathways: Data Scientists, Data Stewards, Research Infrastructure Developers (RIDs), Research Software Engineers (RSEs), and Professional Research Investment and Strategy Managers (PRISMs). The last group took the longest to finalise, as it provides an umbrella for the operational and administrative roles essential for the department to function, such as comms, finance, and HR, as well as project and community managers, and hence had to capture a wider breadth of activity while integrating with the still forming national PRISM network.
Our job descriptions (JDs) were also designed from the start to support career progression, and together with ISD, we were able to pilot a promotion scheme in 2022, which now runs annually. This meant that the JDs are structured in an additive fashion, with enhanced duties, responsibilities, and selection criteria at each grade. These show clearly what skills staff need to be able to demonstrate to progress. They are written in general terms that are common to all the job families, simplifying the process for both staff and the review panel. The duties and criteria specific to a single profession are in the base JD for that profession. This structure is easier to follow in our original wiki format, which has been published as part of the RSE Evidence Bank. It also makes it easier for staff to move diagonally between professions as they pick up skills, and to self-identify with a range of different job titles that can still match to a single JD (e.g. calling themselves a bioinformatician while being on either an RSE or Data Science JD).
A further benefit of the commonality between professions is that it helped us extend every profession to grades that did not previously exist within the department, at either end of the career ladder. Each profession has a director-level option, whereas before, only the head of department was a director, and we now have three staff members from two professions on that grade. At the entry level, we can recruit graduates and apprentices into each profession, allowing us to train up staff internally, especially for professions that are harder to recruit to, such as RID.
The JDs also allow for many different pathways to seniority. Not every leader needs to be a manager of people or projects! For example, someone can progress to Senior grade by “leading design, architecture and implementation for one or more technical aspects of research projects or service changes” and “design and delivery of teaching and training courses.” We have had staff follow a technically focused pathway to Principal level, and conceptually this could be extended to Director.
The benefits to our staff of having career progression opportunities to senior levels and commensurate salaries are perhaps unclear. The case also needed to be made that this scheme provides benefits to the institution, and that any cost increases are affordable. The business rationale was to attract and retain top talent in a competitive market, supporting the university’s digital transformation efforts with staff that can lead innovation, and save on the high recruitment and contractor costs associated with turnover. The scheme supports internal growth by providing structured paths for staff to take on higher responsibilities, enhancing performance and productivity. A structured, annual promotion cycle with clearly defined criteria, transparent procedures, and detailed feedback on decisions is better than ad-hoc one-off arrangements for individuals and thus yields better pay equity.
The scheme utilises UCL's Information Technology Career Framework within ISD, the Research Technology Professionals (RTPs) Framework in ARC, and UCL Ways of Working across both, aiming to ensure the comparability of excellence across the departments. As of 2024, the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre has aligned with the ARC promotions process, allowing promotion of RTPs outside of ARC as well, and we hope that this approach will expand across the university.
The situation is therefore not static! We have been very pleased with the adoption of our career families so far, and staff turnover has reduced year-on-year. However, we’re not resting on our laurels: work continues to improve career pathways for staff in ARC and beyond through our internal People Plan, research culture strategy, and involvement in national initiatives such as DisCouRSE.