Real engineering is about making stuff that works properly. An aircraft wing needs "real engineering" as it must be strong enough, but you also have to make it as light as possible. On the other hand, a friend of mine designed some baggage handling kit and admitted that in general the stress engineering was done on the intuitive "will it support a herd of stampeding elephants" basis.

Real software engineering is surely about anything where you need to be sure that it meets the requirements.