As a recently departed academic, to vastly generalize, the only people who are research software engineers are perennial postdocs who don't realise yet that their career is a dead end and they're being significantly underpaid for their skill level. They also won't develop their skills adequately in such an environment, lacking good standards and mentorship.
Academia needs to stop taking advantage and accept that it should pay double, so they can actually hire inwards from the private sector and gain good knowledge and skills, or somehow increase the prestige and power to be equivalent to other PI positions. I don't the latter is attainable [1], and I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to just be paid well rather than leave for data science/finance/building web apps.
[1] E.g. If you're in physics, and not doing physics, you're fighting a losing battle to get respect and that lectureship/professorship. Everyone doing coding as their main job has to pretend to do research as well.
Academia needs to stop taking advantage and accept that it should pay double, so they can actually hire inwards from the private sector and gain good knowledge and skills, or somehow increase the prestige and power to be equivalent to other PI positions. I don't the latter is attainable [1], and I'm sure plenty of people would be happy to just be paid well rather than leave for data science/finance/building web apps.
[1] E.g. If you're in physics, and not doing physics, you're fighting a losing battle to get respect and that lectureship/professorship. Everyone doing coding as their main job has to pretend to do research as well.