By Kevin Shepherdson, Celine Chew (Straits Interactive) and Michael Low (SMU Academy)
Two years ago, the Prompt Engineer was hailed as one of the hottest new jobs to emerge from AI. Headlines promised six-figure salaries for those who could craft the perfect input to large language models (LLMs).
Recently, The Wall Street Journal published an article, "The Hottest AI Job of 2023 Is Already Obsolete—Prompt Engineering", questioning the future of this role.
Today, while the hype around dedicated prompt engineering roles has cooled, the importance of prompt engineering skills has only grown stronger. In fact, it's become even more critical—for everyone.
Why We Integrated Prompt Engineering into Our AI Apps Design Course
At Straits Interactive and SMU Academy, we anticipated this shift.
Our recently Advanced Certificate in Gen AI Apps Design and Prompt Engineering course isn't about turning learners into prompt engineers as a full-time career. Instead, it’s about empowering 80% of non-technical professionals to use Gen AI responsibly, productively, and ethically.
The future isn’t about hiring a handful of prompt specialists. It’s about embedding prompt engineering as a baseline skill across all job functions.
Each module in our course helps learners create and deploy Gen AI apps using their own domain expertise in what we call capability clusters—customer service/sales, HR, compliance/legal, learning & development, marketing/communications, and more—to drive business productivity, decision-making, and impact.
In our course, learners were able to do the following:
1. Design and build no-code AI apps aligned with ISO/IEC 5338 standards (AI System Life-Cycle)
2. Learn how to embed responsible prompting into AI workflows
3. Understand how domain expertise + app logic + prompt control = ethical AI usage
4. Test and defend their apps against adversarial prompts and red-teaming vulnerabilities
Prompt Engineering is not a Job Title But a Core Competency
The Wall Street Journal reported that companies like Nationwide, New York Life, and Carhartt are not hiring standalone "prompt engineers."
Instead, they’re training all employees—whether in finance, HR, or legal—to build prompting skills into their existing job roles.
Rather than relying on a specialized role, companies are embedding prompt engineering as a general capability. Microsoft’s recent global study across 31 countries revealed that "prompt engineering" ranked second-to-last on the list of new roles companies were planning to add. Instead, roles like AI Trainer, AI Data Specialist, and AI Security Specialist took priority.
At Straits Interactive, we call these upskilled professionals AI Business Professionals. These are business leaders and domain experts who create value responsibly with AI, while helping their organisations build scalable digital transformation capabilities.
After upskilling, they have the knowhow to:
1. Guide LLMs toward useful, accurate outputs
2. Combine structured prompting with business or app logic
3. Apply AI ethically, ensuring data privacy, fairness, and compliance
Why It Matters More Than Ever in Today’s Intelligent World
Generative AI has the power to supercharge productivity, creativity, and innovation across every function.
But without prompt engineering skills, employees face the risk of:
1. Producing biased, inaccurate, or inappropriate outputs
2. Losing control over how AI behaves
3. Violating ethical, legal, and regulatory frameworks
4. Missing opportunities to innovate responsibly
Today, the statement, "AI won't replace people. But the people who use AI wisely will replace those who don't" – famously quipped by Stanford’s pioneering AI researcher Li Fei-Fei – has never rung truer.
DeepSeek and Open Source Amplify This Shift
Today, open-source LLMs like DeepSeek, Llama 3, and other reasoning models are democratizing access to powerful AI capabilities for everyone. As organisations increasingly deploy their own private LLMs or use public open models, prompt engineering becomes even more important to guide, constrain, and control AI behaviours ethically.
The Bottom Line
Prompt engineering isn't disappearing.
It’s evolving—from being a niche specialty into a core competency for the modern digital workforce.
At Straits Interactive, we are proud to be at the forefront of this transformation, helping non-tech professionals create, deploy, and govern AI apps safely, ethically, and effectively—using responsible prompting as a critical foundation.
Want to future-proof your career?
Whether you’re new to Gen AI or already experimenting with ChatGPT, join us for our hands-on 2-day course Prompt Engineering - Conversational AI and Design where you learn how to design AI apps and master prompt engineering techniques.
If you can’t wait, then join our Advanced Cert in Gen AI Apps Design and Prompt Engineering where you can get started with developing and deploying Gen AI in specific areas for your organisation – all without any programming or coding expertise.
Become an AI Business Professional and lead your organisation into the future—responsibly.
