Yes, the <title> tag is a Google ranking factor, according to official Google statements cited below.

“We do use [the page title] for ranking, but it’s not the most critical part of a page. So it’s not worthwhile filling it with keywords to kind of hope that it works that way. In general, we try to recognize when a title tag is stuffed with keywords because that’s also a bad user experience for users in the search results. If they’re looking to understand what these pages are about and they just see a jumble of keywords, then that doesn’t really help.” source

“Other factors can include how a site is structured, whether the words of a user’s query appear in the title, how close the words are on the page, and so on” source

“Titles are important! They are important for SEO. They are used as a ranking factor. Of course, they are definitely used as a ranking factor” source