It's been common in academics forever. A 'staff researcher' is someone who is typically affiliated with an 'organized research unit' which is basically a facility that a lot of 'principal investigators' utilize, and which are likely funded by overhead on the PIs individual grants, or via bulk grants. Benefits are not having to sit around writing grant proposals all day, but they're basically never first or last authors on papers, so it's not a route to becoming a department chair or famous academic etc. Can be more interesting as you get to work with multiple research projects, although if the PIs in the department are the petty tyrant types with inflated egos (more common than not) it can be ridiculously political (who gets time on the big machine etc.). Typically called 'supertechs' by PIs, i.e. 'not real scientists'. Training grad students in techniques is often part of the job, too.