Q:

How do levels affect engineers and scientists?

The command to add scientists and engineers to your Avenger is as follows (roughly):

giveScientist [NUM_LVL]
giveEngineer [NUM_LVL]

What I'm curious about is what the level modifier does to scientists and engineers. I've tried low and high stats, like adding a level 9001 engineer and a level 100 scientists, and I still can't figure out if there's a cap on abilities, a level cap for engineers or scientists, and what the level affects.
Since engineers can actually affect a lot of different facilities, as mentioned in this question, how do levels affect engineers and scientists?

A:

They don't, at least not anymore.
Essentially at some point, there was a leveling system where Engineers and Scientists had a level from 1 to 10, and gave a certain number of "points". Certain research or proving grounds projects required a certain number of points.
For example, Sectoid Autopsy required 10 Science Points.
None of that leveling is actually used anymore. I mean, the code is all still there, but the way the values are set means that every Engineer and Scientist gives 5 points. Tygan and Shen count, so to reach the 10 Points for Sectoid Autopsy, you need 1 additional scientist.

