As a Canadian engineer, I've always found what exactly a UK engineer is somewhat murky. Growing up, if someone told me their father was an engineer I would never think working class. I've lived in Germany too and having an engineering degree was a big deal there, so I know it isn't a European thing, well at least pre-Brexit.
This is the actual difference between Europe and North America. In the US people strongly stratify by income and schooling. In Germany you can be a 'working class' software developer. I'm German, the first person of my family to go to university, but my social circle overwhelmingly stayed non-academic and blue collar. I'd still describe myself as working class. I do not feel comfortable in the upper middle-class culture that a lot of my classmates in uni came from and never assimilated into it.
This was also true for Mark Fisher, which is why I think the description makes sense. As the article points out he often just scraped by financially and wrote in unconvential ways from an outsiders perspective. He was fascinated with the influence of mass and pop-culture on social life. He was not your typical academic humanities character. A lot of the people at the CCRU weren't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer#UK:
> In the UK, "engineering" has more recently been erroneously styled as an industrial sector consisting of employers and employees loosely termed "engineers" who include tradespeople. However, knowledgeable practitioners reserve the term "engineer" to describe a university-educated professional of ingenuity represented by the Chartered (or Incorporated) Engineer qualifications.[23] A large proportion of the UK public incorrectly thinks of "engineers" as skilled tradespeople or even semi-skilled tradespeople with a high school education. Also, many UK skilled and semi-skilled tradespeople falsely style themselves as "engineers". This has created confusion in the eyes of some members of the public in understanding what professional engineers actually do, from fixing car engines, television sets and refrigerators (technicians, handymen) to designing and managing the development of aircraft, spacecraft, power stations, infrastructure and other complex technological systems (engineers).[citation needed]
It kinda sounds like "engineer" in UK usage encompasses might roles that I'd call "technicians" as an American.
How many people here call themselves "software engineers" when they never went to engineering school?
But engineer also referred to train operators and the third crew position on an airliner is typically a "flight engineer" so there is something there.