So I know he's the CEO at SpaceX, but doesn't that just mean he pays people to do the engineering? In my view this makes someone about as much a genius engineer as hiring a plumber makes me a master plumber.
I suggest you read some books about SpaceX. Musk was deeply involved from the beginning, when the team was only a few people and was the chief engineer. Now you can argue, as 'chief engineer' he just happen to heir 4-5 of the most brilliant team leaders and they did everything themselves. But in the middle there was always Musk who made man decisions, and there was nobody else who can really be considered the chief engineer, as all of the team leaders were quite busy running their teams. You can say a lot about Musk, but that he wasn't involved enough in SpaceX is just not one of them.
They actually want to heir somebody for the chief engineering position, but couldn't really find anybody suitable with the needed experience that wasn't already employed high up at the large defense primes. So really on the top level of the company it was the leadership team of Musk, Mueller, Shotwell, Königsman and Buzza.
And even if you want to claim that, finding the best talent, hiring them, giving them the best possible support while having the best possible business strategy to work towards is also quite impressive.
I guess one could argue that those things aren't 'chief engineer' tasks. I guess that would just be considered 'engineering management'. But again, management is what many chief engineers do a lot of the time.
What you absolutely can't compare him to is just a money man who is largely uninvolved. That is just ahistorical.
So at best one can argue that he is himself not a real engineer but a good manager of engineering teams, both small and very big.
