Building an AI prototype takes an afternoon; engineering a resilient, production-ready system takes deep domain expertise. Companies frequently fall into the Demo Trap—celebrating flashy LLM wrappers while sidelining core engineers who manage real-world edge cases, compliance, and schema drift. With 95% of GenAI pilots failing to hit P&L goals, it is time to end title inflation, integrate proven architecture with certified skills, and start engineering for production over hyp