The right solution short-term for CYA reasons is probably to get this replaced by a real engineer on a time and materials contract from an IT consulting company

The right solution short-term for CYA reasons is probably to get this replaced by a real engineer on a time and materials contract from an IT consulting company. That doesn't mean replacing this employee, though. If I was the boss at this company and found this out, I'd make that person in charge of selecting the vendor, specifying the features, accepting delivery of the work, and then monitoring and troubleshooting any malfunctions. More scope managing the rest of the office IT could be introduced to the position. They're not wasting money on getting things running smoother. That's clearly worthwhile to them. They're wasting time not making better use of the employee's time for which they're paid.