A step back for each society's engineers (7)
I believe the answer is:
sappers
'engineers' is the definition.
(I know this)
'a step back for each society's' is the wordplay.
'a step' becomes 'pas' (I've seen this in another clue).
'back' says the letters should be written backwards.
'for each' becomes 'per' (per person).
'society' becomes 's' (common abbreviation in names of organisations).
'pas' reversed gives 'sap'.
'sap'+'per'+'s'='SAPPERS'
(Other definitions for sappers that I've seen before include "Royal Engineers" , "Military engineers" .)