Research software – specialist software used to support or undertake research – is of huge importance to researchers and contributes to significant advances in the wider world. Recent survey data provides clear evidence for a lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the Research Software Engineer community. The majority of practitioners are drawn from Physics and Computer Science backgrounds which suffer from the same lack of diversity. However, we are beginning to see interventions addressing this, and areas where the community is becoming more diverse. There are also lessons applicable to the wider software development field around recruitment from other disciplines and the importance of welcoming communities.

Submitted to IEEE Software - Special Issue on the Diversity Crisis in Software Development.