The vote comes one month after two Saudi businesswomen swept to a surprise victory in chamber of commerce elections in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
Some 70 members, including one woman, are competing in the engineers' two-day ballot to fill the 10-member board, Hashem Awad said.
"It is the first election in the syndicate since a royal decree was issued [recently]... stipulating that the board should be elected by the general assembly," he said.
The board of the 5,000-strong syndicate has always been appointed by the government.
A female engineer, Nadia Bakhourji, is the only woman running for a seat in the engineers' board, saying she wants "to strengthen the position of women in the management of the syndicate".
Bakhourji was among a handful of Saudi women who voiced their aspirations to run in the landmark 2005 municipal polls, but their hopes were shot down when women were barred from participating.
The male-only vote to fill half of the municipal councils was the first introduction of elections to the Saudi public as part of the slow process of reform tailored by the Saudi regime.
Women in Saudi Arabia are meanwhile forced to cover from head to toe when in public, and they are not allowed to travel or obtain an identity card without the consent of a male guardian.
© 2005 Agence France-Presse
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