  The Princeton Research Software Engineering Group has grown rapidly since its
inception in late 2016. The group, housed in the central Research Computing
Department, comprised of professional Research Software Engineers (RSEs), works
directly with researchers to create high quality research software to enable
new scientific advances. As the group has matured so has the need for
formalizing operational details and procedures. The RSE group uses an RSE
partnership model, where Research Software Engineers work long-term with a
designated academic department, institute, center, consortium, or individual
principal investigator (PI). This article describes the operation of the
central Princeton RSE group including funding, partner & project selection, and
best practices for defining expectations for a successful partnership with
researchers.
