[moandcompany]

You're seeing the same thing happen with the "Data Engineer" title as what has happened with "Data Scientist."

In the hiring market, many positions that were previously titled "Data Analyst"/etc were renamed "Data Scientist." Similarly "Database Engineer"/"Data Warehouse Engineer"/"DBA"/etc were renamed "Data Engineer."

Why? Various reasons:

One might be the need to give people a sexier title because they don't want to be "just a data analyst."

Another case might be, hiring managers and recruiting teams changing their title to capture more views for people searching using these terms.

And why are people searching for jobs using these terms? Articles like the ones in the original post, and "Data Scientist: The sexiest job of the 21st century" ;)