Background: Self-awareness has been recently receiving a ention in computing systems for enriching autonomous so ware systems operating in dynamic environments. Objective: We aim to investigate the adoption of computational self-awareness concepts in autonomic so ware systems, and motivate future research directions on self-awareness and related problems. Method: We conducted a systemic literature review to compile the studies related to the adoption of self-awareness in so ware engineering and explore how self-awareness is engineered and incorporated in so ware systems. From 865 studies, 74 studies have been selected as primary studies. We have analysed the studies from multiple perspectives, such as motivation, inspiration, and engineering approaches, among others. Results: Results have shown that self-awareness has been used to enable self-adaptation in systems that exhibit uncertain and dynamic behaviour. ough the recent a empts to de ne and engineer self-awareness in so ware engineering, there is no consensus on the de nition of self-awareness. Also, the distinction between self-aware and self-adaptive systems has not been systematically treated. Conclusions: Our survey reveals that self-awareness for so ware systems is still a formative eld and that there is growing a ention to incorporate self-awareness for be er reasoning about the adaptation decision in autonomic systems. Many pending issues and open problems, outlining possible research directions. CCS Concepts: •General and reference → Surveys and overviews; General literature; •Social and professional topics → So ware selection and adaptation; •So ware and its engineering → So ware con guration management and version control systems;