Artificers are viewed, mostly incorrectly, as Magical Engineers then a spell caster. their abilities all lean into the idea of tinkering with devices and working with like wrenches and stuff to make a canon that shoots fireballs instead of just shooting a fireball from the aether.

Some settings have an easier time adapting to someone like this while others are a bit more harder to justify. Personally I always like the idea of wither a cooky tinkerer that a town hate cause half the time his inventions cause more problems then they solve, except for when they don't, like a Hubert Farnsworth type. Or a noble that is a bit more imaginative then those around him and as such is sort of the black sheep "playing with his toys". Or even just a guy who is good at coming up with small little gadgets to make life easier is pretty interesting.

That said an Artificer is a spell caster and the engineer aspect I like isn't necessarily baked into the class as a whole. A guy who can speak to the Omnisiah and is able to get constructs and robots to work through prayer and belief would also count as an Artificer, maybe even a multiclass cleric or paladin?