Aerospace engineers who build rockets do not have some certification body allowing them to be called engineers. Same with most electrical engineers working on almost everything.
If you think a government deciding who is an engineer is a *good* thing then maybe you should ask yourself why the United States which doesn't require this for the two non-software engineering disciplines has the best engineers in the world.
Really? What evidence do you have for that? Are you saying that companies like Airbus, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, ASML, Leonardo, Rolls-Royce, Dassault Aviation, Toyota, Bosch, Komatsu, Siemens, ABB, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Alstom, Vestas, Samsung, Sony, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding etc. don't have world class engineers?
The United States has the best engineers because it pays the best. Good engineers from other places move here to capture some of that. Obviously strict licensing laws would get in the way of that.
Outside of some exceptions which don't really exist in the US (shipbuilding and heavy forging) the American companies in those industries are highly competitive and often market share leaders.
Annoyingly, the US government still sometimes does.
If you want to take the patent agent exam, your CS degree has to come from an ABET-accredited program, though many of the very good ones aren't (Stanford, CMU).
Likewise, federal jobs also sometimes seem to want accreditation but not always.
You can call yourself engineer if you feel like it, however in case it comes to some court case due to liabilities and such, there might be some issues coming up with having Eng in that contract signature.
Many here would probably say that they have never did the exam, and nonetheless use the title, which is as mentioned, not an issue as long as you don't land in court and the validation of title doesn't come up.
Also in most European countries, being an Engineer even if not professionally qualified, automatically means that the person in question took a university degree in engineering, on an university whose engineering degree was certified as such by the government organisation responsible for all engineering professions.
If you can call yourself an Engineer if you feel like it, then it's not a protected title.
"Doctor", is for instance a protected title. You can not advertise yourself or your services as a doctor unless you're a qualified and practicing medical professional. I believe some kinds of legal practices are the same.
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In Germany I don't think that counts. "Software Engineering" as a title isn't regulated (as kcexn is asking for). The German term "Softwareentwickler" more literally translates to "Software Developer" (as opposed to "Ingenieur") but I don't see companies having problems translating that in job posts and even contracts to "Software Engineer". I've never seen "Softwareingenieur" used tbf.
Getting into Germany as a Software Engineer (for app development) is also as relatively frictionless as it gets in comparison to more-traditional engineering fields.
Verdi is the German trade union so they have to make these kinds of distinctions about which professions they can represent. Don't quote me on this one but I think Verdi represents very little of the modern "app development" software engineers. I guess those who work for more traditional German industries like auto-manufacturing can fall under their umbrella.
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In Germany "Ingenieur" (Engineer) is a loaded term with legal implications so "Software Engineer" is "Softwareentiwickler" (Software Developer) instead. But really this is an HR sleight-of-hand trick. At the end of the day, getting into professional Softwareentwicklung is the same in Germany as in elsewhere that calls it "Software Engineering" (and IMO is what kcexn was asking about anyway).
Well, I have been well served by I.G. Metal, by working in industries they also covered.
Also I have yet to meet anyone doing agency work, that started as Azubi, Quereinsteiger, BWL,... and would sign any document or call themselves Engineers, like it is so very common in US out of a plain bootcamp.
I don't think Software Engineers in the US would sign any documents that expose them to legal liability as a professional engineer either.
It's still not clear to me from this discussion whether the term "Software Engineer" is legally protected in Germany (or any other European country) or if it's just a cultural convention.
The distinction is basically, if a software developer started a consultancy developing custom software solutions and called the company XY Software Engineering, would they be penalized for false advertising if they didn't have professional engineering qualifications?
Your mobile phone runs on a CPU architecture designed in Europe (ARM), manufactured by a machine that only a European company can make (ASML), using a number of protocols invented in Europe (Bluetooth for example), using protocols invented in Europe to browse the internet (HTML/HTTP), based on a very long history of computer science ideas and programming languages invented in Europe or by Europeans.
Give credit where credit is do.
Having said that, I do agree that US companies tend to be better at commercializing new ideas than European ones.
For sure there are great engineers that are from Europe, I've worked with a bunch in the US, but it's a numbers game, and there's no competition there. Partly because so many of those great European engineers come here.
It's an ARM CPU - ARM is built off Berkeley RISC. ASML would never exist if not for billions of dollars of R&D spending by American chip manufacturers, much of which was directly provided.
Obviously there are good engineers in Europe. There just aren't as many as there are in the US, in large part because the US encourages immigration with much higher salaries.
It is correct that a lot of talented Europeans get educated in Europe and then immigrate to the US starting successful companies. Without those Europeans, there would be a lot fewer successful US companies.
American rules, if you start a billion dollar company in the States you're one of us :)
On a more serious note, the US awards more college degrees per capita than most other developed nations. Strict licensing requirements or not, software engineering is just what it's called here because of the many and obvious similarities between it and other kinds of engineering.
The English term "software engineer" is not a protected title anywhere, FAFAIK. However, the local language equivalent of "engineer" is protected pretty much everywhere in Europe because it was awarded solely at technical colleges and universities. The title is (mostly) equivalent to a Master of Science degree, except that technical colleges could also award it (the English equivalent being Master without field designation).
Before I retired (in the US) the organization I worked for was heavily civil engineering oriented, and they were pretty insistent that the computer folks not call themselves engineers. The state licensing board was pretty insistent too.
I was also in a consulting CE firm working in software, but had moved from an engineering position and had an engineering undergrad degree. I was strongly encouraged to get my PE so the company could advertise it, even though the PE credentials had nothing to do with software development.
I think civil engineering is the main field in the US that relies on certifications/tests for FE/PE, there's probably more I'm unaware of though.
As I pointed out above though, aerospace engineers (working on rockets/space applications anyway, IDK about planes) and electrical engineers don't need those tests. Requiring it for CEs seems like a historical artifact more than anything.
> In which countries are Software Engineers not allowed to call themselves engineers unless they are professionally qualified engineers?
I think a better question is: what is the criteria those countries use to determine if someone can use the engineer title?
In general the software industry is still in an early confused state about standards, approaches, skills, etc.
Should we be using functional techniques? Object? Both? Relational? Column store? Push? Pull? etc.
The number of ways to build a working system is enormous and we have a fad-of-the-month every 5 years which starts as a silver bullet and always settles down to be just another option for another set of use cases.
The European Council of Engineers Chambers is seeking to standardise training programmes, beginning with the civil engineering sector: https://www.ecec.net/what-we-do/common-training-framework/.
Hopefully, this convergence will extend to other engineering professions.
