Yeah, I suspect the OP is caught between a rock and a hard place. I know very little about the situation from what's given in the Stackexchange post, but this i

Yeah, I suspect the OP is caught between a rock and a hard place. I know very little about the situation from what's given in the Stackexchange post, but this is how I imagine it; The OP has had no say over this policy at all, and is actually pretty powerless overall. He/she has no ability to give out titles, perks, bonuses, promotions or anything really. Still the position of the OP entails being a link between senior management and the actual engineers, so the OP is the only one in management who actually sees this engineer's work ethic, creativity and problem solving. The few times this engineer has been in contact with senior management the engineer has pushed back their requests for him to just give up whatever work's been done, which doesn't work because the engineer barely knows who the f they are. So the senior management now asks the OP to fix it, but grants almost no authority to do anything. The senior management would like this situation to end in a situation where they don't have to roll back whatever policies they implemented, or treat people in special ways just to get what they already believe is rightfully theirs, and if this doesn't go well they want to blame someone lower for the mess.