Abstract: In recent years, with the development of Marine resources to deep water, the performance requirements of marine engineering equipment for materials are increasing, and the design and development of high-performance steel materials has become one of the main development trends of marine engineering materials. Using traditional "trial and error method" to develop new materials can avoid the restriction of unclear physical mechanism, but the development cycle is long, the cost is high and the efficiency is low. The idea of "material genome" came into being, and the design of the material has gradually changed from traditional design to rational design. The material genetic project aims to "shorten the research and development cycle by half and reduce the research and development cost by half", providing a new direction for the research and development of new materials. On the basis of summarizing and analyzing the basic theories and methods, key technologies and development status of genetic engineering of materials, this paper puts forward the design ideas of genetic engineering of steel materials for offshore engineering. In the short term, it can shorten the R&D cycle and reduce the cost. In the long term, it can also realize the on-demand design of offshore engineering steel, enrich the steel material database, and provide the basis for the subsequent material calculation and development.