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What’s In A Title? Network Engineer Vs. Professional Or Licensed Engineer

Ed Horley

Ethan Banks published a recent article titled “Is It Illegal to Be Called ‘Engineer’ Without Having An Engineering Degree?” Since I actually graduated with an engineering degree, I thought I would attempt to answer some of the questions raised in that article.

TL;DR

In the US, do not call yourself a “Professional Engineer” or “Licensed Engineer” as your title. Those are specially reserved titles for those who actually ARE licensed. However, calling yourself a “Network Engineer” is okay.

If you want to know more details, read on.

What Do We Mean By Engineer?

So, let’s start off with some terminology and definitions.

Engineering:

  • the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building and use of engines, machines, and structures.
  • the work done by, or the occupation of, an engineer.
  • the action of working artfully to bring something about.

Because of the last definition, the discipline of engineering can be broad and encompass a wider array of types then what might be consider the more “classic” university engineer disciplines of chemical, civil, computer, electrical, mechanical, environmental, aeronautical and industrial. These are the more common 4-year degree programs many higher education universities offer as formal engineering programs. There are obviously others (see the slightly more complete list later) but this is good enough for us to talk through the issues.

I am going to stick to Civil Engineering as the discipline from now on. Why? Because first, I received my degree in Civil Engineering and second, it is the most common engineer discipline that you go on and get your professional engineering license.

That is the heart of the matter around using the terms “engineer” and “engineering”. In the generic sense, anyone can use “engineering” due to the commonly understood definition of “the action of working artfully to bring something about.” So, if you build something really elegant, useful, well thought-out and constructed (real or digital) it is appropriate to say you “engineered” the solution. Therefore, by extension, people will call you an “engineer”.

What Officially Recognized Engineering Disciplines Are There?

  • Chemical
  • Civil
  • Electrical and Computer
  • Environmental
  • Industrial and Systems
  • Mechanical
  • Other disciplines which include:
    • Agricultural
    • Architectural
    • Biological (no Bio-Medical)
    • General Engineering
    • Mechanical
    • Naval Architecture & Marine
    • Petroleum

How Does The Law View The Word “Engineer”?

For legal purposes, there is a formally recognized type of engineer–a “Professional Engineer” or a “Licensed Engineer”. These are special titles given to people who have gone through the formal education, study, supervised work, and testing to obtain a license in the state of the US they wish to practice their specific discipline of engineering.

When you have completed those requirements, you are a licensed Civil Engineer, or generically a licensed Professional Engineer. When you become a licensed Professional Engineer, you are issued a number by the state and are required to have a “Stamp” so you can emboss your number and “wet” sign documents indicating you are professionally validating the work you produced as meeting the state engineering standards for a solution.

In the Civil Engineering discipline, you can perform additional study, supervised work, and testing to obtain a Structural Engineering license or a Geotechnical Engineering license. Both of those require that you already have your Civil Engineering license.

In the US, the states have reciprocity laws that allow someone who has obtained their license in one state to only have to pass delta exams to obtain their license in another state. This is remarkably like how lawyers work in the United States (this is all different in Europe for both Engineering and Law).

With this status also comes liability. Much like a doctor can be personally sued for malpractice in addition to the hospital and insurance companies, professional engineers assume a similar liability. In other words, your personal income, wealth, and assets are in play if you make a severe mistake in engineering judgement. This is the part you want to avoid!

Why Must Some Engineers Obtain A License But Not Others?

The most common discipline to get a professional engineering license is Civil Engineering. This is because civil engineers commonly engineer solutions that are “life” impacting. In other words, someone will likely die if their solution fails.

In contrast, other engineering disciplines rarely obtain a professional license as a resulting error would not be life-impacting to the public. There are exceptions. It is common for Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to get their professional license if they are working on life safety systems like mechanical in a hospital or electrical in a medical device. Errors in the engineering of those systems could kill someone, so the requirements are much stricter. A licensed engineer is required for these situations. They will “stamp” their design to validate that it has gone through a formally engineered design and solution.

Someone who is designing a circuit board or networking ASIC is highly unlikely to put the public at risk. Those engineers do not need to obtain their professional engineering license to do that work. So, it is fine to call yourself a “network engineer” or a “systems engineer” or a “storage engineer” or an “audio engineer” unless it is a title licensed by the state.

The state licensing of certain titles is a weird detail. I can say I graduated with a Civil Engineering degree, but I would NEVER sign or list my title as a “Civil Engineer”. Even when working at a Geotechnical company, a title reflected whether or not you had a license. Those without a license held titles such as “staff engineer”, “project engineer”, “principal engineer”, or some other title that did not include any of the formally licensed titles of Professional, Civil, Structural, or Geotechnical. Those are reserved, so be careful what you call yourself.

Start Your Journey

  1. Graduate from an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredited university.
  2. Take your FE/EIT exam, likely while you are still in school. https://ncees.org/engineering/fe/
  3. Then work in your discipline for 4 years of actual verified job experiences that is vouched for by an existing licensed engineer. You could reduce it to 2 years if you graduated from an ABET accredited school.
  4. Take your PE (Professional Engineering) exam and any state specific additional exams required. https://ncees.org/

For example, in California, to get a Civil Engineering License you must pass the NCEES national Civil Engineering exam (8-hour exam), and pass the CA state Survey and Seismic exams (each 4 hours long).

Assuming you pass all those, then you become a licensed professional engineer in that state. The states all have reciprocity allowing those who have valid licenses to apply to get a valid license in a new state. If there are additional exam requirements, candidates only need to pass those additional exams. So, if you are coming from Colorado and want to get a California stamp to be a professional engineer, you will need to take the Seismic and Survey exams.

References

About Ed Horley: Ed Horley is the co-founder and CEO at HexaBuild, an IPv6 consulting and advisory firm. He also co-hosts the IPv6 Buzz podcast.