Recent research suggests that social and emotional competencies (SEC) represent potential psychological resources which can help teachers cope with emotional challenges in their everyday work and demonstrate higher work engagement (Mérida-López & Extremera, 2020; Ornaghi et al., 2023). However, much of the existing literature adopts a variable-centered approach, rather than a person-centered perspective. Consequently, this study aimed to identify distinct profiles of teachers’ work engagement and examine how their prevalence relates to teachers’ SEC. The study was conducted as part of the research project "The role of personality, motivation and socio-emotional competences in early-career teachers’ occupational well-being (TeachWell)" funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. In total, 589 subject teachers with up to five years of teaching experience filled out an anonymous online questionnaire that was distributed to the e-mail addresses of all elementary schools in Croatia. Teachers’ social and emotional competencies were measured by the Social and emotional competencies questionnaire (SEC-Q; Zych et al., 2018), whereas work engagement was measured by the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS; Klassen et al., 2013). First, to identify profiles of teachers’ work engagement, based on four work engagement aspects, a latent profile analysis was conducted. Then, using R3STEP approach, we conducted multinomial regression to test whether there are differences in classification probabilities of profiles, dependent on teachers’ SEC. A three-profile model explained the data best, classifying teachers into highly engaged (59.89%), moderately engaged (36.57%) and modestly engaged (3.54%) profiles. Highly and moderately engaged profiles differed only quantitatively, while modestly engaged profile also differed in shape, showing especially low emotional engagement. Multinomial regression resulted with significant differences in classification among profiles, depending on teachers’ SEC. More precisely, teachers with higher self-awareness, self-management and motivation, social awareness and prosocial behavior, and decision making, were more likely to be classified as highly engaged rather than moderately or modestly engaged, and as moderately engaged rather than modestly engaged. The results of this study highlight the importance of teachers’ SEC for their work engagement, especially when it comes to experiencing positive emotions while teaching and emotionally engaging with their job. This indicates that fostering these competencies could be beneficial not only for teachers' emotional well-being but also for enhancing their overall engagement and effectiveness in the classroom.

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