If you're based in the UK and interested in research software, you might want to look into 'The UK Community of Research Software Engineers'[1] and The Software Sustainability Institute[2]. From what I've seen, the latter in particular are exploring pragmatic ways to make software engineering more compatible with the expectations (e.g. citations) of academic employers.
[1] http://www.rse.ac.uk [2] http://www.software.ac.uk