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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
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We have this in the states but the title is Professional Engineer. Which is the best way of going about it because making “Engineer” a protected title on its own makes no sense.
PE is a funny sore spot for me. It’s almost impossible to obtain if you’re not working with other PEs, which is unfortunately the vast majority of engineering roles. I think we have one in my company and he’s in a different state. I have a master’s degree in EE and 15 years working as an RF engineer, but I’ll still see a handful of people saying we’re not real engineers because we’re not holding a PE license we’ll never need.
I similarly roll my eyes when people complain about jobs like network engineers and software engineers because the PE guys don’t even like that they have engineer in the name when the word engineer just mean roughly “Guy who designs things”. Like the hubris needed to try and co-opt a generally applicable word to just a hyperspecific purpose lol
A professional engineer would be someone who's chartered with a recognised engineering institution (Engineers Europe and it's related Orgs in Europe, Engineering Council and related orgs in the UK, Engineers Australia in Australia etc) and the title would depend on the what the institution want to call them. The professional instution outlines ethical and behavioural requirements to maintain membership.
An Engineer usually refers to someone who does a job related to design and planning for a technical discipline (civil, mechanical, structural, electrical, software etc). The job role usually requires a degree in he engineering disciple, but if you were a particularly fantastic and experienced technical person you might be able to fill the role without one. There will likely be areas of knowledge where you'd be lacking in that case though.
I'm saying the job role could be made to require the chartership to help enforce adherence to the ethical requirements of those governing institutions.
The problem with that is that “Engineer” is too broad a term to require chartership in every single unrelated discipline.
Unrelated discipline? Why would you claim to be an engineer if your work was not related to engineering?
It would make sense to call yourself an engineer if it’s your job to engineer things, which by definition means to design any kind of complex system for some kind of practical use.
“Engineering” is not itself a discipline (branch of study), but instead a category of disciplines. Civil, mechanical, industrial, chemical, and electrical are the core five disciplines that people typically associate with the term engineering, but you can engineer complex logical systems as well, like software or computer networks, and an infinite number of others.
My point is that trying to gate by protected title “Engineer” on its own is impractical because it’s just a broad concept. It makes more sense for each discipline to create some sort of licensing system and protected title that conforms to that particular discipline.
I see what your saying. It's a broad concept but the process for professional recognition can accommodate that. The topic at question is how do we ensure engineers are ethical in how they operate and professional registration and protection of the role along with the assurances that go with that are a good way to achieve it. I know in law in Australia you must be registered with the local law regulator to practice and members must adhere to strict ethical standards. If you are reported and found to be breach those standards you will not be able to practice any more. Meanwhile engineers are polluting and building weapons ad nauseum with limited repercussions. Engineers are held accountable in most regions legally but laws usually apply to safety, not building/designing unethical things.
So I find the UK a good example of how professional registration can be done well. Each discipline has an organisation that handles chartership specific to that discipline. The IET does a lot of lifting for all things electrical, including communications/telecoms, but I believe they would cover some software engineering depending on what your focus was. BCS, CISec or IfSE would likely cover most software engineering.
My experience tends to be with the IET. They are internationally recognised and have branches in a lot of countries. If you have no local support within your company they will connect you with an existing chartered member in your field who can help with advice and chartership application review. I know with Engineers Australia you can migrate your chartership from the IET to Engineers Australia without too much difficulty. Engineers Australia is a single organisation for all disciplines which is then open to the issues you mention. The UK orgs are all regulated by the engineering council which manages a consistent specification for all orgs to hold their members to, the orgs then review applications specific to the discipline against the requirements of the spec.