Individual engineers don't make product decisions at big companies like Volkswagen. When I worked as an engineer at a big company, I couldn't even use a different text editor.
He's not an individual engineer, he was a team lead from the sound of it. Also, your experience "at a big company" has no relevance here.
http://siliconvalleyjobtitlegenerator.tumblr.com/
It turns out "VW almost exclusively promotes their engineers to managers."