Man Adds "Prompt Engineer" to LinkedIn, Salary Expectations Rise 60%

Local marketing coordinator Sam Utley has added the words “Prompt Engineer” to his LinkedIn headline, a move that has reportedly increased his self-assessed market value by sixty percent overnight, despite no change whatsoever to his actual responsibilities, skills, or understanding of how large language models work.

“I typed ‘write me a birthday message for my nan’ into ChatGPT and it worked first go,” Utley said. “That’s engineering. That’s literally what engineers do.”

Utley has since updated his headline three more times, briefly identifying as a “Senior AI Systems Architect” before a friend pointed out he does not have a system, and has never architected anything.

Recruiters contacted for this story confirmed they are seeing a sharp rise in candidates listing “Prompt Engineering” as a core skill, most of whom, when asked to explain the difference between a system prompt and a user prompt, “went very quiet” or “asked if that was a trick question.”

Utley is currently holding out for a six-figure offer.

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