NIH Research Software Engineer Award: December 2026 deadline

The NIH Research Software Engineer Award, notice RFA-OD-24-011, pays salary for people who build and maintain software for biomedical, behavioral and health research. A project may ask for up to $300,000 in direct costs over a period of up to three years, and no more than $200,000 in any single year.

The money is meant for the engineer, not for a whole lab. The research software engineer is the contact principal investigator and has to hold a full time, non tenure track post at the applying institution. The institution submits the application: universities, nonprofits, for profit organizations, local governments and other eligible US entities can do so.

The next application deadline is December 4, 2026, by 5:00 PM local time at the submitting organization. A letter of intent is asked for 30 days before that date, which is November 4, 2026. The notice itself expires on December 5, 2026.

Applications go in through Grants.gov, either with the NIH ASSIST system, an institutional system to system service or Grants.gov Workspace, and progress is then tracked in eRA Commons. Paper applications are not accepted.

NIH says it looks for engineers who contribute their skills to the development and sharing of software, tools and algorithms for health research, and who also train the people who use them. Applications that propose clinical trials are not accepted under this notice.