imo the meaning of "principal engineer" is wildly different between companies anyway. That means something if you're in a FAANG shop but if it's some place nobody's ever heard of it's just needed because all the midlevels already have senior titles.

Lets rephrase it as “most expensive engineer company has on its roster”

Haha, true, the last time I got this title it was when they decided to align titles based on salary.