1. 系统工程师：
系统工程师是在工程项目的生命周期内处理工程项目整体管理的人(更多地关注物理方面)。他们遵循跨学科的方法，管理将需求转化为解决方案所需的全部技术和管理工作。他们通常专注于基于计算机的系统开发的所有方面，不仅如此，还包括硬件、软件和过程工程等。
系统工程方法：
- 利益相关者分析
- 接口规格
- 设计权衡
- 配置管理
- 系统验证和确认
- 需求工程
2. 软件工程师：
软件工程师是负责设计和开发高质量软件应用程序/软件产品的人。他们遵循系统和规范的方法来进行软件应用程序的软件设计、开发、部署和维护。他们通常关注系统中软件开发、基础设施、控制、应用程序和数据库的所有方面。
软件工程方法：
- 流程建模
- 增量验证和验证
- 流程改进
- 模型驱动开发
- 敏捷方法
- 持续集成
系统工程师和软件工程师的区别：
| S.No. | SYSTEM ENGINEER | SOFTWARE ENGINEER |
|---|---|---|
| 01. | A System Engineer is a person who deals with the overall management of engineering projects during their life cycle (focusing more on physical aspects). | A Software Engineer is a person who deals with the designing and developing good quality of software applications/software products. |
| 02. | System Engineers follows an interdisciplinary approach governing the total technical and managerial effort required to transform requirements into solutions. | Software Engineers follows a systematic and disciplined approach for software design, development, deployment and maintenance of software applications. |
| 03. | In general they are concerned with all aspects of computer based system development including hardware, software and process engineering. | In general they are concerned with all aspects of software development, infrastructure, control, applications and databases in the system. |
| 04. | One thing software engineering can learn from system engineering i.e Consideration of trade-offs and use of framework methods. | One thing system engineering can learn from software engineering i.e Disciplined approach to cost estimation. |
| 05. | System engineers mostly focus on users and domains. | Software engineers mostly focus on developing good software. |
| 06. | Systems Engineering Methods are Stakeholder Analysis, Interface Specification, Design Tradeoffs, Configuration Management, Systematic Verification and Validation, Requirements Engineering etc. | Software Engineering Methods are Modeling, Incremental Verification and Validation, Process Improvement, Model-Driven Development, Agile Methods, Continuous Integration etc. |
| 07. | It ensures correct external interfaces, interfaces among subsystems and software. | It makes interfaces among software module, data and communication path work. |
| 08. | System Engineers requires a broader education background like Engineering, Mathematics and Computer science etc. | While Software Engineers requires Computer Science or Computer Engineering background. |
但这两个学科是相互关联的，IT 行业对这些职位没有如此严格的规则，我们也可以看到这两个学科是如何相互合作的。