in the UK, as an engineer, if I'd built this I would expect the regulator to come after me personally for not ensuring the system had adequate controls to protect clients money/investments
with a potentially unlimited fine + prison time
[1]: technically those performing a Certified Function
Here in the US, programmers like to call themselves Engineers, forcing everyone else to use the term "Professional Engineer" or "Licensed Engineer" or some other modifier before their title. I hate it, I wish they would stop, but it's not going to happen.
Software here is a wild, wild, West. The motto most live by is "move fast and break things"... even when those things are people's lives.
Railroad locomotive operators, ship engine operators.
The name precedes the creation of licensed tertiary education level engineers.
A lot of people seems to ignore the fact that licensed professions that require an accredited diploma in a tertiary level education program is a relatively recent feature of our societies.
The low level guys were just doing their jobs, and each individual transaction was mostly legal. A few weren't but it's hard to sort out which ones. Maybe the management should be responsible for ensuring that nobody ever did anything illegal, but they can't really supervise everything all the time, can they?
Poof. Guilt is just a rounding error that all rounds down to zero. The government passes some new regulations to prevent that particular scenario from happening again, and the same people set about finding a new scam.
Once you get to the top, the act of pulling up the ladders behind you is "just" self preservation.
there's a separate certification function for managing certification function employees, and they're jointly liable for anything they do
For certain regulated professions there is, if a building falls down due to a bad design the professional engineer (PE) that signed and sealed the plans can be held personally liable.
Overconfidence can quite literally be fatal.
Deliberately implementing a financial system that ignores established (and probably legally required) accounting practices? That's kind of like a structural engineer willfully disregarding the building code because that's what management asked for.
Also you say regulations in the UK have been changed recently.
I'm not aware of regulations that apply to software engineers.
But it’s entirely possible for someone who calls themselves an engineer to not actually be a certified engineer. So the activity wouldn’t be regulated because the person isn’t part of a professional body that regulates members.
In that case, lack of competence would be a civil issue unless it resulted in something criminal.
It is still possible in the UK and I assume EU (chartered engineer and the EU-alternative).
So the reason it isn’t a PE-discipline is uptake, not the work itself.
not your job title, or piece of paper that you have that says you're X, Y or Z