Interesting thoughts on the term "Design Engineer", alongside some excellent historical context around Clearleft and carving out a niche doing "front-of-the-frontend" work.
In my experience, the term “full stack developer” is often self-applied by back-of-the-front-end developers who perhaps underestimate the complexity of front-of-the-front development.
That’s why I was so excited by the term “design engineer,” which I think I first heard from Natalya Shelburne. There’s even a book about it and the job description sounds very much like the front-of-the-front-end work but with a heavy emphasis on the collaboration and translation between design and implementation.
Personally, I’m not a fan of using the term “engineer” to refer to anyone who isn’t actually a qualified engineer...
