Abstract: With the rapid development of information technology and life sciences, complex networks has rapidly become an interdisciplinary new hot research field over the past one decade. It is well known that the 21st century is the century of complex systems and complex networks. And the intensive study of complex networks has direct relationship with the daily life and the development of many important sub-sciences. How to improve the transmission efficiency and increase the degree of safety, credibility and stability for the large-scale complex networks? How to prevent the malice attack (e.g. computer virus and epidemics) and decrease the random error for the large-scale complex networks? The full and final solution for the above challenging problems depends on the development of the theory and technology of complex networks. This paper aims to briefly review the main research advances in complex networks and their typical applications in software engineering over the last decade, including modeling, synchronization, control, and networked software. The authors attempt to advance the crossing research between complex networks and software engineering.