A theoretical and methodological analysis of the content characteristics of engineering education correlated with the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) showed that trends of the third technological revolution dominate in the current university engineers' training model. One of the effective tools for the formation of a university model for training an engineer of the future could be the ideas of using educational social engineering problems based on elements of socio-humanitarian expertise of engineering design decisions. An optimally designed model of an engineer of the future will improve the quality of training and, ultimately, avoid the negative (fatal) consequences of insufficiently substantiated engineering design decisions.