Cellular signaling networks act as the central processor to deal with environmental signals and regulate cell function, and determine cell fate. Using synthetic biology approach to engineer cell signaling networks is crucial for ultimately constructing man-made "cell machines". Cellular signaling networks can encode sophisticated cell information by processing quantitatively signaling dynamics, which enables multi-dimensional regulation of functional sub-circuits. Here, we first review the research progresses on the signaling coding mechanisms; and then elaborate the methodologies and applications of cells signaling engineering; finally, we envision that signaling-based cell engineering are important for the increasingly-complicated next generation synthetic biology.