The purpose of this study is to develop an engineer competency model using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to improve the national technical qualification system. Korea has managed technical human resources at the government level through the operation of a national technical qualification system that certifies engineers with national certificates or technical grades by laws. However, there have been increasing concerns that the government system is separated from global standards and does not reflect an engineer’s comprehensive capabilities. For these reasons, the new architecture of the system has been continuously discussed and becomes a major policy issue of the Korean government. For the development of the engineer competency model, domestic and global models were separately structured using 554 valid questionnaires with a consistency ratio (CR) of 0.1 or less. The relative importance of engineer competency factors in a domestic model was career (0.383), qualification (0.253), academic degree (0.195), and job training (0.169) whereas the order in the global model was career (0.308), global ability (0.237), job training (0.175), domestic qualification (0.147), and academic degree (0.134). The results of AHP analysis indicated that the evaluation factors and methods recognized by engineers were different from a current government model focusing on domestic qualifications. There was also perceptual difference in the importance of engineer evaluation factors between groups depending on the type of organizations and markets. This means that it is necessary to reflect the characteristics of organizations and markets when evaluating engineer competency. Based on AHP analysis and literature reviews, this paper discussed how to develop a new engineer competency index (ECI) and presented two effective index models verified by simulation test using 59,721 engineers’ information. Lastly, the paper discussed major findings of our empirical research and proposed policy alternatives for the improvement of a national engineer qualification system. The paper contributes to the management of technical human resources since it provides quantitative competency models that are objectively developed by reflecting market recognition and can be effectively used by the policy makers or firms.