[pokeymcsnatch]

Meh you don't need a PE to be an engineer. That's stretching the gatekeeping too far. PE is valuable for a lot of things, but not necessary for a lot of actual engineering work. Is a trained and working electrical engineer not an engineer because a PE isn't necessary to design and build sensors, loggers, etc?

PE essentially just means you can legally sign off on safety critical designs. Engineering is the application of math and physics to solve a problem.

Anecdotally, the handful of PEs I know are the pencil-pusher types. They're engineers on paper, but a critical skill for engineering is actually building stuff.

[burnished]

I mean, if someone answers 'no, got a couple years before I'm eligible', or 'no, I don't need it for this line of work', you still probably got an idea of whether this person works in an engineering discipline.