I am in need of a rather complicated permissions scheme for particular directory.

I have a directory /data

I want the group developers to have read and execute access to this directory.

Then, I want the group research to have read, execute, and WRITE permission for this directory.

Now, I have a second directory /code which developers and research have full access to.

And I have a third group, operations

I want operations to be able to read /data but not be able to read /code

Is this permissions scheme possible in linux?

It is probably worth looking into Access Control Lists for more complicated permission schemes.