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Another of the DisCouRSE NetworkPlus’s funded projects has reached its end and published its final report. Led by Christine Stawitz, Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Birmingham, the project looked at how career progression for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) could be made clearer and more structured, especially for those aiming at senior technical leadership roles.

Here is a quick look at the problem, how the project went about it, what changed as a result, and where to find out more.

The problem: a career path still under construction

Academic careers come with a well-understood promotion route built around publications and grant income. dRTP roles are much newer, and the financial and institutional mechanisms for progressing in them are still being worked out. The result is that many dRTPs are unsure what their next step looks like, or whether there is one at all. That uncertainty feeds directly into recruitment and retention problems, because universities find it hard to compete with the career prospects the private sector offers technical staff.

The project set out to tackle this at Birmingham by developing a career framework for dRTPs and making the case for it to IT leadership, HR and Finance, with the aim of giving staff a more predictable route to progression.

Gathering the evidence

Christine combined conversations inside Birmingham with a look at how other institutions do things:

  • Interviews and workshops with individual contributors, asking which skills they wanted to develop and how much opportunity they had to do so
  • Discussions with line managers across Birmingham’s Research Software Group about what works in the current framework and what could be better
  • Comparisons with other institutions, covering whether their groups have permanent posts, how much of their work is grant-funded versus core-funded, and how their promotion processes run
  • Meetings with finance and research support colleagues to understand how promotion works for academics and in other parts of Professional Services

The work also went out to the wider community, including a panel on dRTP careers at the 2026 Digital Research Infrastructure Retreat, a lightning talk and facilitated discussion at the SSI Collaborations Workshop 2026 (which the CAKE team also attended in Belfast), and a poster at RSECon26.

Using the Birmingham data, Christine then modelled several financial scenarios to find a sustainable way of increasing how often promotions could happen within the team.

What changed

Projects like this rarely run exactly to plan, and this one was no exception: Birmingham’s Chief Information Officer left unexpectedly just as the work was starting, so the team sensibly decided to hold off pitching to IT leadership until a permanent replacement was in post.

Even so, the project has made a real difference. Having seen the evidence, Birmingham’s Advanced Research Computing (ARC) leadership agreed to introduce a more structured approach to promotions and pay increases, based on standardised tables of job roles and the capabilities expected at each career level. This makes it much clearer when staff are eligible for promotion or a pay rise based on their performance, even where budgets limit how many can be granted in a given year, and brings the group into line with other parts of Professional Services that have adopted similar frameworks. The steps that need IT leadership sign-off will take longer, but Christine has been given a small core-funded time allocation to keep pushing them forward.

Christine reflects that the project taught her a great deal about the career progression needs of the Research Software Group and the University policies that shape how those needs can be met. A written report is also in the works.

Why this matters

Career pathways for dRTPs are one of the recurring themes across the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure programme, and progress is often made one institution at a time. Birmingham’s experience is a useful example for other groups: gather evidence from staff and managers, understand how promotion works elsewhere in the institution, model what is affordable, and take what can be implemented locally now rather than waiting for everything to be agreed at the top. It sits alongside the wider skills and careers work across the programme, which you can explore on our skills and careers landscape page.

Find out more

Congratulations to Christine and the team at Birmingham, and to DisCouRSE for supporting the work. You can browse the rest of their funded projects on their website.