I lightly disagree, maybe he doesn't do the calculations or write the tests, but he's almost certainly grilling people all the way down to ensure alignment on e

I lightly disagree, maybe he doesn't do the calculations or write the tests, but he's almost certainly grilling people all the way down to ensure alignment on engineering. His passion being engineering, he's probably not asking 'program management 101' questions, but doing a smell-test on your technical work and your competence level just as a fellow-level senior engineer would.