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Shrewd, sly, or cunning, maybe. Possibly also smart, but that's closer to the specific quality that's being displayed.
Should we call a sysadmin a "prompt engineer" too? No, because that would be stupid.
True engineering is dealing with unchanging and unchangeable constraints (which you find in the natural world). It’s exceedingly difficult to do without a four year degree which is usually not enough.
This other stuff you can learn in a weekend, well, I wish they would not take the word engineering.
Maybe the term engineer has been watered down from what you learned in school but in my and many other people's views its synonymous with hacker in a lot of these categories. I wouldn't call an electrical engineer an electrical hacker but if you weren't an electrical hacker you'd be a pretty garbage electrical engineer. If you've never messed around with or tested a concept or built a circuit for fun you'd probably hate your job and be worse at it. These people are doing these things with prompting and with software.
These days, most long-established engineering disciplines and similar professions are codified to the extent of having member's-only institutions and charters, and basically become "old boys clubs", including ranks and rituals.
Hence there is a divide, between these old schools of engineering and their exclusive ways, and those who use the term engineer more broadly and literally.
The old boys club mentality has many flaws, but they do have that one strong original point: that the harm one can inadvertently cause to others, under the title of engineer (or any expert), is proportional to the expertise claimed. If you claim you can design bridges, then it's incredibly important that you're right - else deaths.
Up I don’t hire a civil engineer for a bridge or your house that got their training from YouTube. It’s actually illegal. Engineers must be licensed.
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Engineering takes many iterations of a concept before doing it right. You think people who engineer bridges and buildings have never thought about or attempted to design any aspect of any bridge or building before? No, they've tested a million different iterations of the same kind of thing and they've built models and they've tried things and failed.
It's why flow simulators and things like airflow chambers exist.
(Given how inherently unpredictable LLMs are that's actually pretty impressive.)
Buff Doge: Engineer in 1923: I can design a bridge and build it with my bare hands, fix any vehicle, and maintain an internal combustion engine.
Weak doge: Prompt engineer in 2023: halp plz i cant write prompt correctly.
Anyone can type text in a box. Understanding the full scope of what you can and cannot do with these tools - and how to best get them to do those things - turns out to be a very deep topic.