It was always intended to, but I am not sure if it survived refactoring… I believe @sam was the last person to work on this area, but that was a while ago.
When SitePoint migrated from vB many members had existing custom titles.
One such member asked about titles at Discourse.
When explained that he had a badge that he could use, but that if he tried it his existing custom title might not remain as an option should he want to revert to it (though if he petitioned Staff I’m sure one of them would have changed it for him) he in no way wanted to risk it.
Most of my users did not get their title automatically applied. I’m 99% sure it’s due to user-error because I granted them this new group-based title while most of them still had the old badge-based title, therefore the override did not kick in.
To solve this, I simply
unchecked “Automatically set as primary group” and removed “Contributor” as default title for good measure
Saved.
Reverted my changes in #1
Saved again.
Titles are now appear to be appropriately assigned to all group members.