While I quite like the term artisan in some ways, mechanics do not build new things. You could call a maintainer a digital mechanic if you really wanted I suppose.

From my perspective software engineering will become more like engineering is now over time, just as engineering itself has become more rule bound and safety conscious over time, presumably since around the start of the industrial revolution.

The term engineering carries gravitas because getting it wrong is a big deal, and its becoming apparent the same is true when software goes wrong.