Is prompt engineering a real job in 2026?

Two years ago, "prompt engineer" was a hot job title. Now I'm seeing fewer dedicated prompt engineering roles and more "AI engineer" or "LLM engineer" positions.

My take: pure prompt engineering (just writing prompts) has been commoditized. The value has shifted to:

1. System design (RAG, agents, eval pipelines) 2. Fine-tuning and model optimization 3. Production engineering (reliability, cost, latency)

But prompt engineering skills are still essential — they're just expected as a baseline, like knowing SQL.

What's your experience? Are companies still hiring pure prompt engineers?