Grind is a state of mind. You will accumulate materials anyway, just by playing the game.
Gathering materials is not really the grind too me. It can be, but the real grind is wasted time, in particular with the on foot engineering.
The lack of in game information on engineering adds to the grind by wasting my time looking for or keeping track of what I need. Whether you're standing at the bar, continuously scrolling back and forth while you consult a website, running a spread sheet to keep track of things or looking up, maintaining a program that actually does what the game should do is wasting my time. Wasted time = grind.
The fact that you acquired all of this stuff, engineer it and find that it's not what you want or really doesn't lend it's self to the way you play is wasted time and effort. I have so many parts clogging up my storage with useless items it's not funny. If I delete them... Gone, all those mats and stuff I gathered are just wasted as is my time. Wasted time = grind.
I would love to experiment further with what engineering has to offer, but again, once you engineer something you can't recover the items you used to make it. Wasted time = grind.
The ridiculous amounts of things need to upgrade and engineer the on foot stuff is mind boggling. Wasted time = grind.
You can also say that you don't need to engineer anything, but then you would be missing out on a lot of gameplay because engineering is a big chunk of the gameplay. And things like an engineered FSD really do expand the gameplay.
If they just made it easier to know what you need, add the ability to add several engineering lists that you could reference with a quantiles needed that reflect what you have in storage, and the ability to recover at least some of the mats from a engineered part, the game would be much better. There is just too much time wasted looking up and keeping track of things. Wasted time = grind.