Are systems engineers real engineers?

application systems engineer

Yes it is a real discipline but it is also the newest form of engineering so it is not as well defined. The original engineers were civil and they started by building pyramids. With the advent of the steam engine, mechanical engineering started.

Exactly what is a systems engineer can be hotly disputed. The best definition I have seen is a senior multidiscipline engineer. In my opinion a real systems engineer needs capabilities in math and physics more that either an electrical or mechanical engineer. They have to be able to calculate performance, total cost and a lot of other hard to define quantities. I have had the title of senior systems engineer and my background includes electrical, optical and RF.

There is a school of thought that systems engineering is merely defining interfaces and writing specs. These are important outputs but one cannot define interfaces and specs without knowing the physics and math behind the problems. I have seen a few systems engineering concepts that were impossible due to overlooking the laws of thermodynamics. Everyone who works in the systems engineering department is not a systems engineer.

Systems engineering is still in the development stage and will continue to be so for quite a few years.