My thoughts were that the proportions of engineering type activities felt higher, and that’s just my impression from a small sample of companies here, and even in those companies it wasn’t like the designers weren’t very talented in the standard design skills. It’s just that I’ve seen designers tasked to build up some very mechanical project work.
When I’ve worked in startups (in the US), there was a similar need to be both designer and engineer, though in later jobs in the US it seemed that those tasks were not expected of most designers. Other US jobs, we were expected to step in to model, draft, set up wall thicknesses, etc. only where the engineer wouldn’t have the finesse to keep the design intent - like logos on a drafted surface. So that was my impression.
There are a lot of design companies in both countries, especially in the USA. It’s really hard/unfair to generalize ( I don’t like it when people generalize about the US ) so take it all with a grain of salt - there are differences between design in the UK and US, though it’s not black and white different.