Merge pull request #384 from hamogu/cycle4_RSE

Cycle 4 Funding: Clément Robert research software engineer

Author: kelle

finance/proposal-calls/cycle4/RSE-bugs-uer-suspport.md

@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+### Title
+
+Research Software Engineer: User and Developer Support
+
+### Project Team
+
+- Clément Robert (@neutrinoceros)
+- Moritz Guenther (@hamogu)
+
+### Project Description
+
+In the last cycle, we had two open hires for an 
+[RSE position](https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/blob/main/finance/proposal-calls/cycle3/user-dev-support-rse.md). One of them (Clément) is available to continue this work in 2024 and this
+proposal is to continue funding for him at a similar level as before for the next 12 months.
+
+
+### Project / Work
+
+We ask to fund a research software engineer (RSE) position to
+tackle both user-facing and developer-facing support issues, as identified and
+prioritized by the Astropy community and infrastructure teams. The RSE (Clément) is expected to
+work independently, but with feedback from Astropy community and a dedicated contact
+(Moritz).
+We envision about an equivalent ~50% FTE appointment, but that can be scaled
+based on the available budget.
+
+We propose to essentially continue to work done by the RSE's in cycle 3. 
+See [invoices for the RSE work from the last cycle](https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/issues/360)
+for a list of work done so far.
+
+There are three themes to that:
+
+#### 1 - Long standing bugs and issues
+
+Astropy has > 1200 open issues, some of them more than a decade old. This is a combination of bugs, feature requests, and ideas, and not all of them are directly actionable. However, hundreds of them *are* bugs and feature requests, often untouched by volunteer contributors for years.
+
+While astropy clearly thrives with those bugs and issues, each of them represents at least one user
+who was stopped in their work and found this annoying enough to open an issue. We know anecdotally, that
+many users who do not think of themselves as "developers" don't open issues on github (e.g. they might not 
+even have an account) so each bug probably represents several or more users who have run
+into a problem. For a smooth user experience, we should close out bugs and fill in feature requests
+where we can.
+
+The RSE shall tackle a number of long-standing issues and
+bugs as listed in the issue trackers for the core package and the coordinated packages;
+more bugs and issues are available than can be addressed by this position, so the
+choice of which ones to address will be guided by community input.
+
+#### 2- Support current fires
+
+Astropy has few required dependencies, but changes in new versions of pytest, numpy-dev, or sphinx can make
+CI on all new PRs fail. In coordination with Pay Lian and others, Clément
+did significant work to keep astropy up-to-date with numy-dev in the transition to numpy 2.0 so far. While that
+is mostly done, he will support changes in pytest or future numpy version as they come up. How much work
+this is and when it's required is hard to predict, but having Clément available with a significant number
+of hours per week to fix these things as they come up eases the development process for all
+other contributors, in particular occasional volunteer developers who might not be used to diagnose
+CI failures that have nothing to do with their own changes.
+
+#### 3 - Astropy Roadmap
+
+The RSE shall work on the items listed on [Astropy Roadmap]
+(https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/blob/main/roadmap/roadmap.md), that the
+community has already prioritized, but not yet found the resources to implement. The current roadmap
+is almost a year old and most of the items that would be appropriate for this position are under
+development by the current RSE hires or other astropy contributors, even though they are still marked
+as orange or red in the roadmap. However, the roadmap will be updated in the next Astropy coordination 
+meeting, which will take place just a few weeks after Clement would start on this contract.
+We expect that he will pick up one or two items from the new roadmap.
+
+
+
+
+### Approximate Budget
+
+Budget breakdown (nominal):
+
+- Contractor fees: $93600 (approx. $90/hour for 20 h/ week for 12 months)
+
+Minimum viable amount: There is no really a floor to bug fixing - every bug helps. However, if amount granted is insufficient to support Clement for a a significant amount of time (a few months) he will have to find a different job as soon as possible. We thus suggest a minimum of $50000 (~6 months).
+
+### Period of Performance
+1 year