Design Engineer CV Example

A stronger, more engaging design engineer CV gives you the best chance of success. It can help you pass the ATS CV screening stage and impress the recruiter or hiring manager, increasing your prospects of reaching the interview stage. Let’s break down the core components of a CV and examine how to build them effectively.

Key sections of a design engineer CV

Your approach to creating your winning design engineer CV will differ depending on your experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

However, at any stage of your career, a design engineer CV serves as a professional biography that must clearly illustrate your career trajectory. To help you tell that story effectively, we will now break down the document piece-by-piece, starting with your contact header and moving through the key pieces of your professional path.

CV Header

Start your design engineer CV with a header that features subtle, professional design elements and sets the tone for the document. Add your name, email address, phone number and location (your full address isn't normally needed). Additionally, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

For UK applications, it's not usually advisable to include a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the decision-making process and are discouraged under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary

Below your CV header, the next section tends to be a CV summary or CV objective. This paragraph briefly explains a few of your key skills and qualities, so employers can easily understand whether you're likely to be a suitable candidate for the design engineer job. A CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, while a CV objective provides an alternative approach, showcasing your career ambitions and how the role fits with these. This makes a CV objective ideal for entry-level candidates.

For either a CV summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences. Showcase a few key skills, personal qualities and career achievements or ambitions, always reviewing the job description as you write, to show how you fulfil the requirements of the role.

An effective CV summary will focus on a few of the key skills required for the role and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to give the reader a good impression of your unique qualities and briefly provide evidence of their impact in previous roles. Find an example below of a positive design engineer CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

The design engineer CV summary above gives you an idea of what to avoid. The differences are subtle, yet significant. An ineffective summary might be vague or generic, failing to highlight specific personal qualities that help you stand out and failing to address the requirements specified in the job description. They might also lack firm evidence of your skills, and be structured with long, hard-to-read sentences.

Work Experience

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers tend to value the work experience section, as it shows evidence of how you've put your relevant skills to good use in your career to date. Always take the time to tailor this section, including keywords and phrases that match the job description. This will help employers to judge how strong a fit you are for the role, and how you might apply your skills for the benefit of the organisation.

This section should contain a list of your most relevant previous jobs in the last 10 or 15 years. Add the job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Include detail in bullet points, outlining the skills you used in the role and the impact they made.

To differentiate your work experience section from other candidates, include action verbs and quantifiable evidence that showcases the impact you made. Show your career progression through the skills you developed and used in each role. Here's an example of best practice in a design engineer CV work experience section:

Above is an example of what not to do with your design engineer CV. An unengaging work experience section could be too generic, focusing too much on day-to-day duties rather than skills and achievements. It could also fail to address the job description or lack evidence to show the impact you've made in your career to date.

Education and Qualifications

With your education section, you'll draw attention to your most recent and highest qualifications, particularly emphasising any qualifications listed as a requirement in the job description.

To be eligible for design engineer positions, you typically need to have a relevant university degree, and include it in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in Design Engineering or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, you should definitely mention it in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your most relevant skills, such as 3d CAD modelling proficiency or advanced FEA simulation proficiency.

When creating your education section, think about which qualifications are most relevant to the role, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. For each qualification, add its name and level, the awarding body or institution, its location (if necessary) and your dates of attendance or graduation. If you want to emphasise your education in your CV, include bullet points showing specialist areas of study, projects, awards, society memberships or anything else that helps show you've got the necessary skills for the job.

If the job description requires any specialist certifications or licences, you may wish to add these in your education section. If you add these, it's also a good idea to include the expiration date of the licence or qualification, if it has one.

Skills

In your CV's skills section, you'll want to draw attention to some of your strongest skills that make you suitable for the role. Review the job description to get an idea of the most essential skills, and create a list of hard and soft skills, including some of your strongest, most unique qualities that set you apart from other candidates. For a design engineer CV, it's essential to include relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, such as teamwork and advanced FEA simulation proficiency, to impress the reader and show you're qualified for the design engineer position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are the specialist skills required for completing the everyday duties of the role, such as the use of certain software or equipment, or specialist industry knowledge. You can develop these skills through study, training, on-the-job or through completing industry certifications. For design engineer roles, key hard skills you've gained, such as 3d CAD modelling proficiency, and computer-aided design software utilisation, are typically among the most critical for the job. Review the job description, and include four or five key hard skills in your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

Take a look below to see the type of skills that are commonly listed in a design engineer CV hard skills section:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are the personal strengths and qualities that show employers how well you'll fit into the role and complement other members of the team. Soft skills tend to be more transferable and applicable to different roles than hard and technical skills. As a result of rapid technological changes in the world of work, soft skills are becoming ever-more valued by employers. Soft skills can also be particularly valuable for junior or entry-level roles where candidates haven't necessarily had the time to develop hard skills and career achievements.

As with your design engineer CV hard skills list, review the job description to learn the key soft skills for the role. Include the best soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Craft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills that reflect the job description, while also including some of your strongest, most unique skills to stand out from the crowd.

Here are typical soft skills candidates include in a design engineer CV.

Foreign Languages

Including a section on language skills can be beneficial, if you speak at least one language to a reasonable level of competency, in addition to your mother tongue. This is true even if language skills aren't a requirement for the role, as foreign language abilities often correlate to other valuable soft skills. In this section, include any foreign languages you speak to a standard that could be useful in the world of work, with an indication of your proficiency level.

The methods for indicating your foreign language skills on your CV include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You might choose to adopt an international standard framework for languages, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns a standardised level to your language skills, for example:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications, Training and Licences

Depending on the role and your qualifications, it might be necessary to include a certifications section. Having a separate section can draw more attention to your training, and show employers your proactive, motivated mindset towards professional development, which could be a key asset. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your design engineer CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

Here is a list of some key certifications and licences that can be particularly useful for design engineer applications:

Optional Sections

Including optional sections in addition to the core elements of your design engineer CV can help you provide further evidence of your suitability for the role. If you're unable to show you have all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience, optional sections can be a valid way of providing further evidence of your suitability, to give you the chance of gaining an interview. If you're an entry-level candidate or a career changer, optional sections can be particularly valuable.

Explore our career resources for practical strategies to make your CV stand out and move you closer to landing an interview.

Hobbies and Interests

One valid way to show you have relevant skills for the job is by listing your hobbies and interests. Additionally, this section gives you the chance to show employers different facets of your personality and interests beyond work, which can help them to differentiate you from other applicants. However, it's important to only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant, or related to, the role you're applying for. If your hobbies don't help you to show skills required for the role, that are missing elsewhere in your CV, it's best to leave this section out.

Achievements

Listing your key career achievements in a distinct section can be an effective way of drawing attention to them. Add any awards you've won or career milestones you've reached, so employers can easily see the impact you've made in your career to date.

Volunteer Roles

Listing any previous voluntary work is another useful way of showing you have the necessary skills and experience for the job. If you don't have much relevant work experience, either because you're a junior candidate or you're changing jobs from an unrelated field, volunteering can provide valuable examples of your skills in action. In your volunteering section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

Add your job title or a description of the volunteer role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you volunteered (start and end date). Under this, add bullet points to show the skills you used, and evidence of how they contributed to positive achievements for the organisation.

Top action words to use in a design engineer CV

Using strong action verbs in your work experience bullet points is a great way to focus this section and show the impact you've made in your career to date. Starting each bullet point with an action verb that reflects the skills required for the role will help the reader to easily cross-reference your skills to the job description. Remember to always back up the action verbs you use with quantifiable evidence that shows the impact you made. You can use past tense for any action verbs describing previous jobs, with present tense for action verbs to describe your current role and responsibilities.

Example of a design engineer CV

Now that you know exactly what to include in your design engineer CV, we can take a look at a final, finished example below:

To get an idea of how your completed, one-page CV will look once its been fully designed, see our selection of CV examples.

How to make your CV ATS compatible

Many employers now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to assist with managing the recruitment process. One of the key elements of most ATS apps is the ability to scan CVs and rank them according to their likely match to the job description. This saves recruiters and hiring managers the time and effort of reading every CV in detail. With many vacancies often receiving hundreds of applications, ATS software can really relieve the burden on hiring teams and free them up to focus only on the most suitable candidates.

The increasing usage of ATS apps by recruiters and employers means it's critical to adapt and prepare your applications to successfully navigate this stage of the selection process. Following the tips below will give you everything you need for an ATS-compatible CV:

• Include keywords and phrases that match the job description, making it easy for ATS apps to identify a strong fit for the role.
• Use clear, standard CV headings that are easily recognisable, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Opt for a simple CV layout with consistent formatting, avoiding any special design elements that could make your CV harder for ATS apps to scan.
• Select a font that enhances the readability of your CV, including recognised serif and sans serif fonts between sizes 10 and 12 for body text, and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points rather than writing long, full sentences, as this will make your CV easier to scan and parse, and help your keywords and phrases to stand out.

You might feel there are a lot of things to remember when writing an ATS-compatible CV, but with just a few small tweaks, you can ensure yours passes this stage. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates to avoid the stress of adapting your CV for ATS screening.

Key takeaways for a winning design engineer CV

To make a strong first impression on hiring managers, tailor your CV for every application, adding keywords and phrases that match the job description. Select a suitable CV format that reflects your experience level, and focus on highlighting your key skills, and demonstrating how you've put them to good use to achieve positive outcomes in your career to date.

Finally, using an eye-catching, expert-designed CV template from Jobseeker can really give your CV an edge over those from rival candidates, helping you to achieve success in your job applications.

References:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, HR Trends