Leadership in engineering entails an integration of diverse skills. Engineering leaders employ a full spectrum of abilities and knowledge to develop innovations while seeking to understand, embrace, and address the current and future impact of their work. These leaders must actively foster committed and productive relationships with various stakeholders, including themselves and their teams, users of their technologies, and those affected by their engineering efforts. Developing leadership skills is essential for engineers, enabling them to work effectively in teams, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, solve problems, manage projects, and drive innovation. These skills are crucial for professional success and for the positive impact of engineering on society. Leadership is widely recognized as a key component of business success, with 89% of business leaders considering it fundamental. The engineering student graduation profile emphasizes the need to develop leadership skills, setting the expectation that students acquire these competencies. This study aims to characterize leadership profiles and skills among senior engineering students at a prominent university in Chile. Specifically, it seeks to assess students' self-perception of their leadership skills. The sample comprises 140 students from various engineering disciplines within this school, with the highest enrollment nationally. To achieve these objectives, a quantitative study was conducted by adapting and administering the Developmental Leadership Questionnaire by Larsson to the context of engineering students in Chile. This questionnaire is based on four leadership styles: developmental leadership, conventional positive leadership, conventional negative leadership, and laissez-faire leadership. The results of this study enable the characterization of prevailing leadership profiles among the sampled engineering students. Additionally, significant differences in leadership skills were identified between students who have completed their professional practice and those who have not. These differences also exist based on the ongoing engineering program. The study underscores the importance of equipping engineering students with leadership skills. The results and conclusions from this study provide valuable guidelines for implementing actions that ensure future engineering graduates meet the labor market's expectations for leadership competencies.