Engineering mostly isn't building either. AEs don't build the planes, they design them. EEs may prototype some boards, but as a profession it's also mostly design (intended for manufacture). Unless you're an EE working primarily on one-offs, and small ones at that, you don't build most of the products of your mind. MEs don't build the cars. CEs don't build the dams or bridges.

Engineering is principally a design discipline, with a small fraction actually doing the hands-on building of their designs at least once they hit a certain scale of manufacture or get past prototyping. Technicians, skilled and unskilled labor, and machines do the vast majority of the building of those designs.

I think we're in violent agreement: Source code is detailed design, and programming is an engineering design process.

We can and do design at higher levels, too.