That could just as easily describe Google and it is full of “smart people” (tm)
Google and Apple would employ a mix of engineers and developers.
A person with degree or a person with a specific set of skills? If skills, then can you enumerate few of them?
Of course, there is no PE for software. So, within our industry, it's a lot more squishy. There's a bit of "I know it when I see it" here...
If you're building complex systems with an eye for reliability and/or safety, you might be an engineer.
If you're just building a business/consumer app, using infrastructure and tooling that somebody else built and maintains, you might not be an engineer.
With all that said, as a hiring manager, I'm not going to be hung up on what title you held at a previous job, as long as you appear capable of doing the job now. And my career has mostly been on the "just a developer" side of the line - there's nothing wrong with that. I'm simply not building software that has massive negative repercussions if I get it wrong (beyond impact on my employer's bottom line).
Also, we're not putting our licenses/careers on the line by signing off on software releases. As someone with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (but not a licensed engineer) working as a developer, I think the key difference is the accountability and incentives.
Avionics software and some medical devices do have near-Engineering cultures and practices, but a lot of software would look much different if we had real Software Engineering. Half the IoT malware magnets sold wouldn't ship if someone had to put their professional license on the line with every firmware sign-off.
Not all software would need a practicing Engineer certifying that standardized releases, just like you probably don't need a structural engineer to sign off on your patio expansion or treehouse.
Steam boiler explosions very common in the U.S. (and around the world) until we started requiring licenses to design them with serious consequences for neglecting best practices and procedures. It's one thing to bet your company's reputation and move on to somewhere else if the company fails, but quite another to set aside the corporate veil and be personally responsible.
For a look at what an Engineering-like system would look like, a good friend lives in Vienna, Austria and went to church with Joseph Mangan. [0][1] The short version of the story is that airliner air pressure control valves have three positions: (1) closed, (2) slowly bleed pressure, and (3) wide open to equalize pressure on the ground and better ventilate the cabin. Older designs used separate motors for the two different open positions. Mangan was working for an Airbus subcontractor, writing the firmware for a valve that saved weight and shifted complexity from the mechanical design to firmware by using a single motor. From the closed position, it spun the motor one way to open the valve a small amount, and spun the other way to open the valve a large amount. If the firmware were to malfunction while closing the value, it could turn the motor too far and rapidly depressurize the cabin. In order for the subcontractor to ship the product, Mangan had to sign off that a whole bunch of testing and best practices had been followed. Best practices hadn't been followed, he refused to sign off, and his manager faked his signature. (In particular, one of the required standards was that the first thing the firmware does is initialize the processor's interrupt vector to point to actual interrupt handlers. This wasn't the case.) Mangan ended up stealing a bunch of internal documents and posting them online at great personal cost in order to force the company to follow procedures. In the end, after long court battles, Mangan continued to work on certification of the valve firmware, and he eventually signed off on it once it had really met all applicable standards and he was convinced it was safe.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mangan
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2923861/Airbus-whistlebl...
Engineer implies a higher level of skill WRT establishing and following processes designed to minimize risk. A software engineer, like their mechanical or civil equivalents, has a strong sense of duty WRT building things that are useful, safe, reproducible, etc.
No doubt the line is gray. But, your stereotypical web app developer (failing fast while chasing a unicorn) is not an engineer.
In the real world, I'd expect Boeing to employ many software engineers [insert 737 Max joke here]. Google and Apple would employ a mix of engineers and developers. And a company that builds CRUD apps on contract would be almost exclusively developers.
All of this ignores the licensed engineer's opinion, which is often that none of us are engineers because we don't have to pass a licensing exam. And often don't even have to pass a particularly rigorous academic program.