>the only person (in most states) who can legally call himself an Engineer
Someone must have a PE to sign off on certain things when dealing with regulators and so forth. Which makes getting a PE in certain situations important. But not having a PE is hardly equivalent to calling yourself a lawyer if you haven't passed the bar in a state.
That’s not true for any of the United States. You can’t call yourself a Professional Engineer without being licensed, but anyone can call themselves an engineer. Train engineer, growth engineer, happiness engineer, and software engineer are all perfectly valid titles without a P.E. license.
The funny thing about that is, at least when I worked in the oil business, I'm not sure I've seen another industry that threw around the "engineer" with more abandon for technicians of all stripes.
I'd note that's a case where a business is representing themselves as an engineering firm and, and in some situations, it would be reasonable to expect that meant they employed licensed engineers. (The specific case is pretty silly though so is calling themselves engineers.) But individuals certainly call themselves and are called engineers all the time who aren't licensed in Texas and everyplace else.
Someone must have a PE to sign off on certain things when dealing with regulators and so forth. Which makes getting a PE in certain situations important. But not having a PE is hardly equivalent to calling yourself a lawyer if you haven't passed the bar in a state.