What title would a programmer have in an university?

[Simfish]

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/earth-like_planets_arent_rare/

[9] If the NSF surprised you with a $2 million grant tomorrow, what would you spend it on?

I would hire a full-time computer programmer and a couple of post-docs. And I’d probably update both my office PC and my laptop. I’m a theoretician, so I don’t really need that much money. On the other hand, the space missions we are talking about are very expensive—billions of dollars. For those, 2 million dollars wouldn’t even qualify as seed money.

So Kasting said that he would hire a full-time computer programmer if he had more money. For some reason, I've never seen a full-time computer programmer listed as staff in an university though. I'm sure some professors have the money.

[petergreat]

The title will be "computer administrator" or simply "technician".

[Vanadium 50]

The University of Washington has 60 employees with the word "Programmer" in their job titles and 692 with the title Computer Specialist. (2009 data)

Google is your friend.

[I like Serena]

The title will be "computer administrator" or simply "technician".

I like the title "software engineer".

[Simfish]

The thing, though, is that they're so hard to find. A google of "university of washington" + "computer specialist" produces little useful information (it shows a few jobs that are available, but you don't get an idea of how hard these jobs are to get, or what types of people actually hold these jobs). And 60 employees is not much, especially over such a large university with just as many departments.

EDIT: well I finally went to the washington.edu page and googled that term in, and it gave useful results at last (so now I know what term to use for other universities). But before I posted this thread, I did not have an easy way to guess at the term "senior computer specialist", especially since I can't find anyone with that title off the Astro, AMath, or Physics departmental websites.

http://www.astro.washington.edu/people.html displays one person (http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/rowen/) in the staff who actually does scientific computing. Maybe a couple other members of the staff are involved without webpages (but this isn't particularly likely, since most staff members do administrative stuff).

http://www.amath.washington.edu/people/staff/ => none of them are even scientific programmers (one does system admin-type stuff, which is different from scientific computing).

http://www.phys.washington.edu/directory?staff => you get two people who might be doing scientific-programming stuff (one has the title "software manager", and the other has the title "research associate"). "Software manager" is more of the backend stuff than the scientific computing stuff though. And research associate is a valid title - but it sounds harder to get than most programming jobs (is it?)

Each department does have its own tech support-guy, but their tasks are more computer backend stuff than scientific computing stuff. A student graduating with a physics degree is probably not going to know this computer backend stuff (he can teach himself, of course, but it's much more likely that he will be hired for scientific computing stuff)

It's a perfectly valid question to ask "which places have the best interface to find people with these jobs, and what is the best means of finding information about them" (and a question that many others on this site will also find useful). Especially since many staff members don't have homepages and aren't listed in the directory

I even emailed one of the few scientific programmers that I could find, and she said that some others did exist, but she did not give out names.

[negru]

I guess you can ask Peter Woit what his paycheck says?

[cgk]

I'm working in a large field which specializes in algorithm and software development for chemistry. Even here I only know one person effectively working as professional programmer employed by a university, and her original assignment seems to have been something completely different.

There are few permanent positions available (in Germany they'd have to be permanent). But I guess the main problem here is that there is a large mismatch between the job perception and the actual skills required to do it. In order to do competent scientific computing, you have to have both a great command of software development *and* the science in question. People who have both either go into the industry or may even become professors themselves, but they would probably not settle for a job which's official title would be "technician".

That is kind of sad, actually. Because, honestly, most scientists are not as competent at software development as they could be. Even if this effectively is their daily job.

[twofish-quant]

I know people that are full time programmers in academia, but they have job titles like technical staff, or research scientist.

People who have both either go into the industry or may even become professors themselves, but they would probably not settle for a job which's official title would be "technician".

It's not so much the job title as the work. There are competent programmers with Ph.D.'s, but if you were to get one of them to work for you, then you'd better have them do something other than install Microsoft Word. Otherwise, they'll just get frustrated and leave to work for someone else that pays a lot more.

It's a perfectly valid question to ask "which places have the best interface to find people with these jobs, and what is the best means of finding information about them" (and a question that many others on this site will also find useful).

As with other jobs. Networking. Attend conferences, make friends, get job leads.

[mal4mac]

It might be "computer officer", "project officer", "research assistant", or any of several other titles...

"university of washington" + "computer specialist" is not a good search IMHO ... too vague .... try "programming" instead.

Click over to: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/ and search for "programming". Amazing how many different job titles there are for programming jobs in UK academia!

[TMFKAN64]

My wife and I both worked as programmers for (different) universities in the past. We were both listed as "Research Programmer".

[twofish-quant]

Something to note here is that in a lot of high tech situations, it's not clear what your job title is. I've been working at my job for about four years, and I'm still not sure what my job title is because no one has bothered to tell me.

[Theory4G]

I can Agree with TMfKAN64. I heard "Research Programmer" quite often in the past.

[Simfish]

Nice replies, everyone. :)

I'm working in a large field which specializes in algorithm and software development for chemistry. Even here I only know one person effectively working as professional programmer employed by a university, and her original assignment seems to have been something completely different.

There are few permanent positions available (in Germany they'd have to be permanent). But I guess the main problem here is that there is a large mismatch between the job perception and the actual skills required to do it. In order to do competent scientific computing, you have to have both a great command of software development *and* the science in question. People who have both either go into the industry or may even become professors themselves, but they would probably not settle for a job which's official title would be "technician".

That is kind of sad, actually. Because, honestly, most scientists are not as competent at software development as they could be. Even if this effectively is their daily job.


Oh, that's interesting. Would you say that the lack of programming jobs is primarily at the supply side of the chain, or at the demand side of it?