In this article, engineering surface application is introduced as a new concept. The basis of this concept is the understanding that different surface technologies are applied to design of existing engineering components but, it is necessary to know that surface engineering would cover only part of the design of the component, the surface treatment to be applied should also be known. This is because, surfaces with a high index of hardening due to deformation, are resistant to severe adhesive wear, abrasion and pickling, but they should not have the same resistance to other types of wear. It means that a correlation must be established between the surface quality and the pickling resistance. In this article, it is shown that the use of high compatibility metallic materials is preferred and that a correlation can be established between the surface quality and the pickling resistance by a simple number. The selection of materials and the methods of obtaining the engineering surfaces for tribological applications, depends to a large extent on the mechanism and particular type of predominant wear. Therefore, the selection of materials resistant to wear will be analyzed depending on the type of wear in question.