Hi
Modern automotive engineering is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufacture and operation of motorcycles, automobiles, buses and trucks and their respective engineering subsystems.
Automotive engineers are involved in almost every aspect of designing cars and trucks, from the initial concepts right through to manufacturing them.
Broadly speaking, automotive engineers are separated into three main streams: product engineering, development engineering and manufacturing engineering.

    
Product engineer (also called design engineer), that would design components/systems (i.e brake engineer and battery engineer). This engineer designs and test a part, seeing that it meets all its requirements (i.e. the shock), performs as required, material meets desired durability and so on.
    
Development engineer, that engineers the attributes of the automobile. This engineer may provide to the design engineer what spring rate he/she requires to provide the "ride" characteristics required for the automobile to perform as desired, etc.
    
Manufacturing engineer, determines how to make it.