>An engineer is dealing with a significantly unique problem space that has only been addressed by theory, if that. This is a very high standard for defining en

>An engineer is dealing with a significantly unique problem space that has only been addressed by theory, if that. This is a very high standard for defining engineer and I'd guess most practicing engineers don't meet it. Sure, there's people bridging the gap between theory and practice, but most engineering effort goes into applying the same well-understood theory and practice to slightly different situations. I'd posit that your definition of software engineer is closer to what most people would call a research scientist.