Unfortunately, people seem to think that it means I'm a software developer, in IT, or something along those lines. It's quite unfortunate as both my Master's and Ph.D. were more towards mechanical engineering.
It's okay to use equivalent language when seeking out jobs. Try looking for "product design" or "product management" roles that emphasize technical competency.
Reach out to INCOSE and IISE professional organizations for help. Those organizations exist to represent your skill set to industry. Challenge them to improve recruiter and human resources recognition of the term "Systems Engineer".
Product Management is what most of our graduates end up doing, but they're usually doing it in software jobs. That said, we have a number of patent and IP lawyers come out of our program and a lot of people go into medicine or biomedical. The latter since we have a dedicated biomedical option as we have a number of faculty in that area.
I'm currently dual hatted as a system's engineer and software developer, so people are always inadvertently right when they ask me that question.