All subjective to who applied the label. A company can label their employees anything they like. The work doesn’t even have to be related to the label or industry standard. When I was in the garbage business our company used to label the average lowly garbage guy a “Hazardous waste handling specialist”. lol
Software engineers usually take a label of their own choosing.
The term data engineer is common among companies from every industry and is not subjectively applied in most cases, it’s a very specific job.
For example:
You open a checking account with Bank of American - BofA.
Over the years you have the account perhaps you opened a brokerage account with BofA, financed a car, took out a home equity loan, financed a new house or business, etc..
Then later on, you move and send the bank or go online and change your address.
How does BofA determine all the accounts you have with them so when the account address changes all the accounts get updated at the same time.
How all that data is collected, stored and shared between applications is often times the Data Engineers job.
It’s a lot more complicated and less subjective than you might imagine.