In its day-to-day use, the German notion of Bildung can be translated as education. There is also a philosophical understanding of Bildung, as a concept that refers to the cultivation of human traits and capacities, as well as to the goal of this process. How can we understand Bildung as a goal of contemporary engineering education, and how does Challenge Based Learning serve as a pedagogical approach to accomplish it? To answer these questions, our contribution starts with an exploration of five interpretations of Bildung rooted in the history of philosophy, beginning with a focus on (1) self-determination, (2) self-understanding, (3) inner motivation, and (4) individual autonomy as key dimensions in the development of Bildung in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, followed in the twentieth century by a focus on (5) intersubjectivity. We proceed with a reflection on recent trends in engineering education to help us reposition Bildung both as an individual and multi-agential notion. We suggest that Challenge Based Learning can cultivate both the individual idealisation presupposed by the notion of Bildung as initially conceived and the relational focus presupposed by multi-agent interactions and collaborative endeavours witnessed currently in engineering education, which is closer to the development of Bildung as intersubjectivity. We offer three educational examples where Challenge Based Learning exposes students to real socio-technical challenges put forward by stakeholders from the local ecosystem of the university. We discuss the implications of bringing together the individual and multi-agential understandings of Bildung in engineering education in connection to these examples. The conclusion offers a reflection on the prospects and possibilities for Bildung in engineering education.