Abstract Expanding the capacity of systems engineering to include evaluating and designing social systems is a desired goal as stated in the INCOSE SE Vision 2025. Systems engineering applications in sociotechnical contexts, from management and organizational to learning and education studies is already documented. There is room for adaptability in systems engineering methodology to accommodate a further reach into the social domain. The growing interest in this expansion is leading to the establishment of the term: social systems engineering. Social systems engineering is a reciprocal relationship between systems engineering and the social sciences. More specifically this means: 1) adapting/applying systems engineering methods/tools in a range of social policy areas in industry, government and academia; and 2) developing/applying social science theory and methods for the integration of teams and communities that are engineering systems. In this paper, we provide an overview of the history of social systems engineering and develop the concept to provide systems engineers with a conceptual foundation for using social systems in their systems engineering practice.