While I do find it unfortunate that software developers in research are underappreciated, I wonder if making an official title for this will really solve the problem. One issue is that if all you are doing is writing code, you could do the same thing in industry, and there&#x27;s really no way academia is going to match that kind of salary.<p>I don&#x27;t really see the issue with how it appears to work right now though? My understanding is currently if your research requires you to program, then you program it yourself, or collaborate with others. Thus, being a good coder actually helps some people publish more. At least this is what I saw with people in the more practical research topics like systems research, but even in theoretical research.<p>On the other hand, I suppose this is a problem for people who are not in CS. However, I imagine these people just hire programmers to do the work in the same way they might hire lab assistants. In any case, I&#x27;m not really convinced just putting a new title or career track will help.. how is this career track any different from just a normal software development track?<p>It seems more like the real issue is that you are hiring a postdoc when what you really want is just a software developer, but perhaps they only want to pay post doc salaries?