It's a fairly common english phrase that originated out of the gaming culture of the US in the mid 2000-2010s.

"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.

Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.

I believe it was emergent from FPS gaming culture, particularly following the popularity of Apex Legends. In Apex Legends you have an energy shield which serves as a buffer of hit points. When playing cooperatively it is useful to communicate when this energy shield is "cracked", thus the line "they are cracked" emerged. This originally meant a target player's shield is down in Apex Legend specifically, but it was then the Fortnite (and broader FPS) community which took this phrase and warped it to mean someone is precise or an excellent shot. Today it is certainly used in the context the original poster intended.

edit: Looking again, this may be overstated. Apex-era gaming culture likely helped popularize the usage, but considering older idioms like "crack shot," the actual etymological root is more likely there.

I have never seen it used in this way before around 2021, but it has become popular since then among the Twitter and YouTube tech influencer circle. Maybe that's where OP picked it up.

I'm with you, came here to ask this too. This is how I would have read it:

"Crack engineer" someone who is an excellent engineer, I feel like this goes back to at least the early 20th century, certainly long before gaming culture.

"Cracked engineer" a damaged person who is an engineer

Shrug. Language changes all the time!

same, i've heard "crack engineer/team/etc" but cracked sounds to me like u fucked em mate