They do! All the time! The FAA signs off on your flight. Your hardware has compliance requirements. OSHA?! There are things you legally cannot say about your own product in marketing and people find that out the expensive way and it will impact your product launch (hardware and software!).
Most engineers know government as a place money comes from or the creator of the annoying rules (true and true). Contracts, grants, SBIRs. Everything else goes in the not my job pile.
But is the product working your job? Cool, then this is your job.
Here's what I think happened. Engineers absolutely get taught to think in systems, it's the whole degree but it's usually not explicit. School just stops at the edge of your product. Avionics, structures, thermal, love it, yep totally a system. Nobody mentions that your system is sitting inside ANOTHER system that has its own rules and its own people and its own processes for your product to be a success. Some do, but certain engineers won't listen bc those people "aren't technical" (saving for another soapbox).
Baby engineers can be shocked that work happens outside the engineering org that they have to know about!! How does this get to a customer? When? In what packaging? Do they know about it? Who signs off? Who's allowed to say what about it?
And you don't need to know any of it in detail, that's what legal and marketing and facilities are for and they're great! You just need to know it's there. For policy, the govt is literally making the rules you can play within, around, or try to change. For highly regulated technology, national security/defense, critical infrastructure, your biggest stakeholder is them throughout your entire product lifecycle. You should know what they're doing. You can track it with this cool tool called Broadside. Built by annoyed engineers, for annoyed engineers.
Understand the whole system. Otherwise "move fast and break things" is just breaking things for future you.