Formation of the professional potential of students of technical specialties who will be ready to ensure the competitiveness of the regional economy at the end of the university is an urgent issue for research in the light of the challenges of the forthcoming industry 4.0, and at the same time, the growing demand of industrial enterprises for adequate staffing. This issue is particularly acute in the old industrial regions of the country, in which the processes of new industrialization go "side by side" with the re-industrialization of the traditional industrial sector structure. Training of a new generation of engineers is carried out in the process of introducing new models of engineering education in technical universities in Russia [2, 5]. Is not an exception - higher educational institutions of the Sverdlovsk region, the largest old industrial region of the country, producing more than 40% of the country's industrial output. The new format of engineering education in the Ural universities is connected with formation of a competence approach, a personal-oriented educational environment, development of flexible individual trajectories of education in framework of educational programs, promotion of project-based learning technologies, system of academic mobility, establishment of a network of innovative engineering laboratories, a sustainable partnership with the largest regional employers. The main task of the research is to identify the peculiarities and contradictions in the formation and development of the professional potential of future engineers in the context of the ongoing changes in engineering education and the strategy of innovative development of the regional economy. The results of the seventh stage (2016) of sociological monitoring of students of the leading universities of Sverdlovsk region, training technical specialists (N=730) were used as the empirical base of the study. Evaluation of the professional potential of students in the technical areas of training has revealed the risk of a growing contradiction between demand and supply for a new generation of professional engineering cadres.