My former friends have already answered some questions, so I won't go into details.
A patent engineer is a person who wants to write patent documents. First of all, you should have a certain understanding of technology, and then you should also have some attainments in writing skills. You can clearly express an inventive idea in words, but you can't write it down. This article needs more than one or two years of patent writing training, and there are about 500 cases written to reach the level of engineers.
Foreign patent agents are all senior patent engineers. Moreover, patent agents are not necessarily lawyers, and those who graduated from general law (liberal arts) do not meet the qualification for patent agent examination, but those who graduated from engineering do.
If you want to engage in the patent industry, you'd better go to a well-known patent agency as an apprentice first. Only by studying it for two or three years and laying a solid foundation for case writing can you obtain this qualification.