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Getting Started

What is a Research Software Engineer, and why might you want one? Take a look at the about page, or watch a video instead.

How does it work?

1. Contact

Your particular needs for software are likely to be different from others, along with the resources available to you. To start, we recommend that you look over the kind of help that we can offer, and contact us with your specific needs. The details of our services are provided on the Stanford University IT page. You can also use our services explorer to easily send a message alongside the support that you are looking for.

2. Consult

Once you’ve reached out and we have a general understanding of your goals, work done, and work to be done, we like to arrange a call to better understand the details.

3. Support Plan

After the call, we’ll draft a Support Plan that includes a summary of goals, work, and protocol for communication. The first month is suggested as a trial period for both you and the RSE.

4. Project

Once the plan looks good to you, we get started! After the initial trial period, we continue on a monthly basis, and keep communication open and continually check that progress is being made.

5. Completion

Upon completion, we celebrate! A project summary is provided to you by the RSE, and if it’s desired, we share and promote your project with the greater Stanford community to attract interest.

Want to learn more? Check out RSE Services on the Stanford University IT site.

Services

The following services are available to you!

  • Software including development of code, packages, testing, continuous integration, and containerization.
  • High Performance Computing including scaling an algorithm to run on HPC and/or cloud services
  • Maintenance of code respositories including responding to issues and requests for the continued lifecycle of the software.

You can read the above pages for more detail, and learn about levels of service here.

Best Practices

In addition to support, we offer guides with best practices for software development.

  • Software Checklist how sustainable, and reproducible is your software? Generate a badge for your repository with the Software Checklist.
  • Best Practices guide for software engineering.

If you have any requests for additional guides or questions, please open an issue.