Systems Engineer CV Example

A systems engineer CV that's well-written, engaging and showcases the most relevant skills and experience gives you the best chance of progressing to the next stage of the recruitment process. We’ll now review the essential sections of a CV and outline how to write each for the strongest results.

Main systems engineer CV sections

How you approach writing your systems engineer CV will vary according to your experience, your level and the details outlined in the job description.

However, regardless of your years of experience, a systems engineer CV needs to connect the dots of your career into a cohesive story. In the following sections, we’ll dive into the specific chapters of your CV step-by-step, showing you how to refine everything from your initial introduction to your long-term achievements.

CV Header

Kick off your systems engineer CV with a header listing the essential contact information such as your name, email address, phone number and location. You don't typically need to include your full address. Incorporate design elements that set the tone and design language of your document. Additionally, including your LinkedIn profile as a URL can be useful, as it will help the reader to quickly and easily access further information about your career and credentials.

When you're applying for jobs in the UK, it's generally not advisable to include a photo or more personal details than are strictly necessary, such as your age, gender, ethnicity or nationality. Including these can jeopardise the recruitment process by introducing bias, and can fall foul of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

Under your header, write a brief CV summary or CV objective, outlining a few of your key skills, qualities and achievements. This short paragraph can help employers to quickly assess your suitability for the role, setting the tone for your systems engineer CV. While the CV summary focuses on your key skills and achievements, a CV objective highlights your career ambitions, making it more suitable for junior candidates.

Both a CV summary and objective should be concise, with an ideal length of two or three sentences. List your key skills, personal strengths and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to ensure the content reflects the requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary would typically focus on a couple of key skills that match the job description, demonstrating how you've used them to good effect in previous roles. It's important to focus on your unique qualities and provide a preview of how they've made an impact in your career to date, which you'll unpack later in the document. Below you'll find an example of a strong systems engineer CV summary.

Above is an example of a less effective CV summary, with some subtle, yet notable differences. Common mistakes that lead to an ineffective summary include a lack of quantifiable experience, vague statements or failing to tailor your summary to the job description. Long, rambling sentences that lack structure can also make your summary harder to read.

Professional Experience

The work experience section of a CV is usually the most important part. Employers look for evidence of how you've developed and used your skills to good effect in your career to date, as an indication of your likely future performance. Always tailor this section of your CV, focusing on keywords and phrases that match the job description, so employers can assess how you might put the same skills and qualities to good use in the future.

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. See below for an example of how to put the work experience section best practice into action:

Above you can see an example of what not to do with your systems engineer CV work experience section. A less-engaging work experience section might include irrelevant roles or jobs from a long time ago, and generic information that fails to address the requirements of the job description. It could also lack evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Education

In your education section you'll want to list your highest and most recent qualifications, particularly if they're a requirement for the role.

A degree is typically a strict requirement for systems engineer jobs, and as such, you'll want to showcase yours in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Engineering in Systems Engineering or another similar, relevant degree that confirms your eligibility for the position, include it in your CV. You might also wish to add other degrees or qualifications that highlight your strongest skills, such as kubernetes container orchestration management or infrastructure code deployment automation.

When listing your qualifications in your education section, select only the most suitable qualifications and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working backwards. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

It may also be useful for you to add any specialist industry qualifications, certifications or licences that you might require for the role. If you choose to add these, remember also to add an expiration date, if the licence requires renewal in the future.

Skills

The skills section of a systems engineer CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a systems engineer CV, you'll want to focus on the most relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, including teamwork and infrastructure code deployment automation, to catch the reader's attention and show you're qualified for the systems engineer position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills refer to the technical and specialist skills required for the everyday duties of the job. They might include specialist knowledge, or the use of certain software and equipment. You can gain these skills through study, training or industry experience, and they might require a licence or certification. For systems engineer positions, hard skills that match your abilities, such as cloud computing architecture design, and infrastructure code deployment automation tend to be valued by recruiters and hiring managers. Firstly, check the job description, then add four or five key hard skills in your CV that help the employer to decide if you're a good fit for the role.

The best hard skills section would be based around skills listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. To give yourself the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer, and your hard skills list should reflect this.

The following section highlights skills that are commonly listed under hard skills in a systems engineer CV:

Soft Skills

Soft skills are distinct from hard skills and tend to reflect your inherent personal qualities and strengths. These are often more transferable to different roles, and help the reader understand your working style, and your likely fit to the team and the organisational culture. As a result of rapid technological changes to modern ways of working, soft skills are becoming more and more valuable to employers. Soft skills can also be particularly useful for junior or entry-level roles where candidates haven't had the time or career experience to develop hard skills and notable achievements.

Just like the hard skills section, begin by reviewing the job description to learn the most desirable soft skills to include in your systems engineer CV. Only add soft skills that you can provide evidence for throughout your CV. Draft a list of up to five key soft and transferable skills, combining the most essential skills from the job description with your strongest personal qualities.

Consider the following soft skills that frequently appear in a systems engineer CV.

Language Skills

If you speak any languages in addition to your mother tongue, you might want to include them in your systems engineer CV as a languages section. These can be valuable for your application, whether languages are specified as a requirement in the job description or not. In the languages section, list the languages you speak to at least a reasonable level, with an indicator of your competency level.

The ways to indicate your foreign language skills depend on the level of detail you want to provide. They include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could otherwise use an internationally recognised language standard, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns your language skills a standardised level of competence, as follows:

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

Certifications and Licences

To showcase additional qualifications and training beyond the basic requirements for the role, consider adding a certifications section to your CV. It's often beneficial to include it as it can illustrate a positive attitude towards self-improvement and professional development, as well as a proactive mindset. All these qualities will appeal to most employers and decision-makers. Furthermore, if there are any necessary certifications or licences for the job, this CV section takes on even more importance. If you're applying for a technical role or a position that involves the use of specialist software or equipment, these might make it more necessary to include a section showcasing your training.

These example certifications and licences are ideal for candidates applying for systems engineer roles:

Additional Information

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the systems engineer job. Consider including a few optional sections to your CV if you think you need to provide extra information to prove your credentials. These sections can be particularly valuable if you lack relevant work experience, such as for entry-level roles, or if you're changing careers to a completely new field or specialism.

And if you'd like more tips on making your CV stand out, explore our career resources. They’re designed to help you showcase your strengths and boost your chances of landing the job.

Hobbies and Interests

Hobbies and interests are a legitimate way to showcase your skills, if you have any hobbies relevant to the role. In addition, you can use hobbies and interests to show elements of your personality that might not shine through otherwise, giving you a chance to offer something different to most candidates. However, only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant to the role, and that help you prove skills that you haven't been able to show in your work experience or other CV sections.

Awards and Achievements

Creating a list of your key career achievements can be an effective way of drawing attention to the things you're most proud of from your career. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Volunteering

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. Approach your volunteering section in much the same way as your work experience section.

For each entry, include a job title or description of your role, the organisation, its location and the dates you volunteered. Adding bullet points can also help you to show how you developed relevant skills, and used them to good effect.

Best action words for a systems 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. You'll also want to back up any action verbs you're using with quantifiable evidence that showcases the value you added for previous employers. Use the past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, with the present tense for any current responsibilities and achievements.

Full example of systems engineer CV

Now that we've covered the main sections to include in your systems engineer CV, we can see how it would all come together in its final form in the 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.

Tips for optimising your CV for ATS

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are becoming more and more integral to the recruitment process for many employers. These systems ease the burden of the recruitment process by performing various tasks, including scanning and ranking CVs based on their likely fit 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.

Because ATS software is becoming more common in the recruitment process, it's important to make some concessions in your CV to give yourself the best chance of progressing beyond the initial screening. With that in mind, here are some tips on preparing your CV for ATS screening:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description, increasing your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• 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 widely-used font in either serif or sans serif style, with a font size between 10 and 12 for body text and 14 and 16 for heading text.
• Use bullet points throughout your CV in place of full sentences. This serves a few purposes, reducing the overall length, helping keywords stand out and making it overall more scannable by ATS apps.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the steps to creating an ATS-compatible systems engineer CV, but a few small changes can make a big difference. To smooth the process, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates to increase your chances of success at this stage of the screening process.

Key takeaways for your systems engineer CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. Choose the most fitting CV format for your experience level, and focus on showcasing how you've developed the necessary skills for the role, and used them to positive effect in previous roles.

Finally, enhancing the look and feel of your CV using one of Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help leave a lasting impression on the reader, and boost your chances of success with your job applications.

Sources:

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