Prompt Engineer
Definition
A Prompt Engineer is a professional who specializes in crafting, testing, and optimizing prompts to get the best performance from large language models for specific tasks and applications.
Why It Matters
The quality of LLM outputs depends heavily on how you prompt them. Prompt Engineers bridge the gap between what businesses need and what LLMs can deliver. They turn vague requirements into precise instructions that consistently produce high-quality results, often dramatically improving AI application performance without changing the underlying model.
How It Works
Prompt Engineers spend their time: writing and refining system prompts, developing few-shot examples, testing prompts across edge cases, measuring performance metrics, A/B testing different approaches, and documenting prompt libraries for teams to use. They also work on prompt security, preventing injection attacks and ensuring safe outputs.
Career Outlook
Prompt Engineering has evolved significantly since 2023. Pure “prompt engineer” roles are becoming less common as the skill becomes expected of all AI Engineers. However, specialists who combine prompting expertise with domain knowledge (legal, medical, finance) or technical skills (evaluation systems, automated optimization) remain in high demand. Many prompt engineers transition into broader AI Engineering roles.