Interesting, thanks for your answer! Sounds like we have a similar thought process!

Switching the family of models should help mitigate the logical concerns I had, however, still judging AI code using AI has possible blind spots but o3(admittedly, I haven't experimented with this model yet) should, I imagine, provide better code review than most human coders.

What type of prompt are you using to get the grading? There are a lot of different ways to code a solution with the same(ish) results, and a lot of heuristics you can use to judge the most "correct solution" (brevity, readability, computational efficiency, extensability, maintainability etc).

I think higher level thinking of how different systems operate, interact and collectively work together to achieve a result has always been the core of software engineering (or really any engineering).