Where in my comment did you see me proposing that "being a fully experienced & knowledgeable software engineer should be a base requirement for all academic research (in any field)"

Go back and re-read it please. I'm saying you need to be capable of using the tools for your job.

If I was working as a software engineer, I'd not be asked to perform heart surgery. A more realistic example would be a software engineer being tasked to develop software in the medical industry, where I would expect them to understand the subject matter enough to ascertain their software is not crap.