No, context engineering is not only for developers, although developers are usually the ones implementing it. The benefits extend to product managers, designers, and end users because context engineering improves reliability and user trust. Anyone responsible for building or maintaining AI-powered systems benefits from understanding why context matters and how it affects outcomes.
Non-developers often encounter context engineering indirectly. For example, a product manager may notice that an assistant becomes unreliable in long conversations. The fix is not “write better prompts,” but restructuring how context is managed behind the scenes. Designers may influence context engineering by deciding how much information is shown or hidden in user interactions, which affects what is passed to the model.
From an implementation standpoint, developers usually use tools like vector databases—such as Milvus or Zilliz Cloud—to make context engineering feasible at scale. But the underlying concept applies broadly: managing information flow so the model sees the right context at the right time.