What is your source for this? As far as I know, there is no official designation for "software engineer" in the US. Nor any official certifications or accredited programs. Computer science is the degree programs most take.
As far as visas are concerned, what would the criteria be to verify a software engineer instead of a programmer.
Under Nafta, programmer or coder is not an approved listed profession. Engineer is. It does not list the sub-category of Engineer, so Software Engineer is normally included. To qualify as an engineer you need to meet the accredited requirements, which are either an engineering license, an engineering degree or a minimum 3 year bachelor's degree. As stated in the linked article, the INS is sometimes more strict, and only accepts licensed engineers or engineering bachelors, even though that can be contested.
You see it specifies that the USCBP considers a job role where the majority of the work involves coding does not qualify as a software engineering role. That would be a computer programmer role instead, which is not approved for TN work permits.
If you look at OOH, they distinguish between computer programmer and software developer. The latter role description is what Software Engineer role should also be like, I couldn't find a source, and OOH doesn't list software engineer, but it matches up with what I was told by lawyers.
If you look at the number of people employed in each of those job classifications, Software Developers have 1.25 million and are expected to increase by 300k in the next 10 years while Programmers have 295k and are expected to decrease by 22k in the next 10 years. So "Programmers" is already only 20% of the total and is expected to decrease to 15%.
Looks to me like those are rules created in the context of NAFTA. I don't believe there are any such restrictions or rules in the US outside of that specific VISA program.
As far as visas are concerned, what would the criteria be to verify a software engineer instead of a programmer.