Do You Actually Need a Prompt Engineer?
Before hiring, ask whether you need a dedicated prompt engineer or an AI engineer with strong prompting skills. If you're building a product with complex, multi-step LLM interactions, evaluation pipelines, and systematic prompt optimization — you need a dedicated prompt engineer. If you just need someone to write better prompts for an existing tool, that's a skill any good AI engineer should have.
What to Look For
Technical Skills
Strong prompt engineers understand: chain-of-thought and few-shot prompting techniques, structured output formats (JSON mode, function calling), evaluation methodologies for measuring prompt quality, multiple LLM providers and their quirks (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini), and basic programming skills for building prompt pipelines and evaluation harnesses.
Non-Technical Skills
The best prompt engineers are precise writers who think systematically about edge cases. They need strong analytical thinking, attention to detail, and the ability to document their work in ways that other team members can understand and maintain.
How to Evaluate Candidates
Skip the resume screen and go straight to a practical assessment. Give candidates a real-world prompting challenge: a task that requires multi-step reasoning, handling of edge cases, and evaluation of output quality. Good candidates will ask clarifying questions, test systematically, and document their approach.
Red Flags
Watch out for candidates who: only know one LLM provider, can't explain why a prompt works, have no experience with evaluation or testing, or treat prompt engineering as "talking to ChatGPT." The field has moved well beyond basic prompting.
Where to Find Prompt Engineers
The best prompt engineers come from diverse backgrounds: technical writing, software engineering, linguistics, and QA. Look beyond job titles and focus on demonstrated skills. South sources prompt engineers from across Latin America with proven production experience and strong English communication skills.
Salary Expectations
US: $110K-$180K. Latin America: $3,000-$5,500/month. The LatAm market offers significant savings for a role that's inherently remote-friendly, since prompt engineering work translates perfectly across locations.
