BuddyPress.org

@dtabraham
I’m looking for the same functionality and would prefer, to pass the user role over to a custom xprofile field to integrate it in buddypress search.
Meanwhile I show the user roles with a function I found in the forums:

bp-custom.php:

function pc_get_userrole ($user_id) {

$user = new WP_User($user_id);

$userclean = $user->roles[0];

return $userclean;

}

function get_user_role( $user_id ){

  $user_data = get_userdata( $user_id );

  if(!empty( $user_data->roles ))
      return $user_data->roles[0];

  return false; 

}

and then echo where you want (in my case I did it in member-header.php):

<?php echo get_user_role(bp_displayed_user_id()); ?>

You can take a look here: link to a profile on my site

greetings