Globalization and modernization as the most powerful features of today's society pose high demands towards individuals for achieving high level of competence in all areas of their own actions. Thus, continuous investment in the development of competences becomes imperative for a quality performance of a certain profession, where vocational teachers profession is not an exception. Vocational teachers nowadays are assuming a multitude roles, for whose performance is necessary to master the key competencies as well as the teacher competence. In accordance with the aforementioned, the aim of this paper is to show the wideness and relevant dimensions of vocational teacher competence profile. As an introduction, in the first part of the paper it is presented the vocational education and training context at the European level, and also the Croatian and German national levels. In addition, it follows an overview of the teaching staff in Croatian and German secondary vocational schools, as well as the presentation of ways and models of initial education of vocational teachers in both countries. The main part of the paper is the presentation of the vocational teachers competence dimensions, with pedagogical and didactical as basic dimensions. Each of these two dimensions implies an additional set of competences, which commonly make complete and comprehensive professional profile of a vocational teacher. As a component of the pedagogical dimension of teacher competence, particulary emphasized competencies are personal, social, communication, emotional, analytical, entrepreneurial, digital and developmental, while the didactical dimension considers competences in the field of methodology of curriculum development, organization and management of the educational process, evaluating students' achievements and partnership with parents. Finally, there are presented and compared educational programs of supplementary pedagogical-psychological competencies for teachers in Croatia, the current tendencies for the implementation of a Program for acquiring pedagogical competences for vocational teachers, teaching assistants and mentors, the initial education program of vocational nutrition teachers at the Technical University of Berlin and the initial education program of vocational teachers at the Technical University of Dresden. As an conclusion there are presented recommendations for further research in the field of vocational teachers competencies, in terms of more detailed outcome analysis of available programs for the acquisition teacher competencies. It also points the relevance of this topic for the quality of the entire vocational education and training system, since it inevitably affects economy development and, consequently, development of today's society.