The course of Russia on innovative development sharply raised the question of reliable personnel basis for technological modernization of society. This, in turn, requires the modernization of engineering training, which allows to supply all sectors of the economy with highly qualified engineers and technitians of the new generation. Such modernization should be based on a strong ideological foundation, one of the important elements of which is an ideal image of the engineer, combining all the necessary qualities, knowledge and competence. In order to understand what this ideal image should be, the authors of the study turned to the opinion of the scientific community – the teaching staff of domestic engineering and technical universities. The research method is qualitative manual content analysis. Empirical object – scientific publications in specialized journals selected using keywords. 36 scientific publications were selected to be analysed. This study had been realized by sector of the sociology of professions and professional groups of the Institute of sociology of the Federal research sociological center of the Russian Academy of Science. All contents of papers under investigations were divided into 5 thematic groups: historical excursion on the processis of the formation and transformation of looks on the image of Russian engineers; socio-philosophical discussions on the social status and roles of Russian engineers; structurations of professional group of engineers according to diverse bases; definitions of basic professional and social functions of engineer; formation the competence models for the students of Russian engineering and technical universities. Posterior anaysis had demonstrated that image of modern Russian engineer constructed by academic community was rather complicated and included various scientific, technical, socioeconomic and personal character competences.