With the number of consumer and industrial products in development continuing to increase, the role of manufacturing engineers is more important than ever. Being able to plan and layout the manufacturing process of new products or optimize existing products is a critical function employers are looking for.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average manufacturing engineer makes around $89,000, and demand is projected to grow 10 percent a year through 2029 (or more than double the average job growth rate).
To be a manufacturing engineer, you’ll need analytical, technical, and communication skills, paired with a familiarity of manufacturing processes and quality assurance and control techniques. The specific skills and proficiencies you’ll want to include in your resume will vary based on your experience and the position you’re applying for.
This guide will look at five manufacturing engineer resume templates to help provide an outline you can base your own resume on. At the bottom, we’ll review particular skills and strong action verbs you should emphasize to convey your capabilities to hiring managers.
Being able to demonstrate your aptitude for a job can be difficult in a single piece of paper, but as a manufacturing engineer, you should use it as an opportunity to showcase your efficiency. Incorporate a skills bank to highlight your particular proficiencies and show your hard work by indicating relevant internal promotions.
Manufacturing engineers walk a balance between requiring a mastery of technical skills and manufacturing techniques. Regardless of the specific type of manufacturing engineer position you're applying for, you should include a separate skill bank that outlines your expertise with both.
All manufacturing engineers who have had successful field experience to the point of being internally promoted with past employers should indicate that promotion on their resume. This shows to hiring managers that you are dedicated to performing at a high level and have demonstrated this in the past.
Manufacturing engineers will generally want to demonstrate their level of comfort in working with numbers and efficient communication techniques. Incorporate quantitative values into your resume, including in an opening summary, to give that impression.
Being meticulous about details is a key skill for manufacturing engineers. Highlight each of your bullet pointed accomplishments by including a numerical data point that helps hiring managers understand your impact as efficiently as possible.
As a manufacturing engineer, a major portion of your role is to conduct assessments and provide direct, accurate reports. Demonstrate your familiarity with the position by opening your resume with a short summary that boils down your relevant experience to a few sentences (and includes quantitative values for impact).
Senior manufacturing engineers are expected to have a broader understanding of the manufacturing process, including being able to analyze larger scale changes and supervising teams of other engineers. You should aim to indicate your past accomplishments as a leader, and use strong action verbs to impart your familiarity with the work.
As a senior manufacturing engineer, hiring managers will be looking for you to have experience with managing teams and taking on higher levels of responsibility over time. Indicate this on your resume by making sure to include leadership roles or accomplishments, ideally growing in scale through to present day.
Manufacturing quality engineers are expected to have an understanding of the overall manufacturing process with a specific focus on being able to assess the quality of the final product. Efficiency is everything to manufacturing engineers, but weighing that against quality is a specific ability. Indicate your experience by emphasizing quality-related skills and techniques.
As a manufacturing quality engineer, it's in your best interest to highlight your quality assurance and control work in particular. Each of your accomplishments should relate to data points such as reducing load times, reducing the number of returns, or improving processing times.
Along with listing your technical skills and quality control techniques in a separate skill bank, you should incorporate them into the body of your resume to lend credibility to your expertise with them. Reference using software such as CAD or IQ, OQ, and PQ validations, as examples, to impart your successful hands-on utilization of them.
Entry level manufacturing engineers may be fresh out of college, meaning they may not have direct experience on the job. If this describes you, bolster your resume by detailing your coursework and including any relevant special projects or activities you’ve been a part of.
Even without field experience with an employer, you can demonstrate your familiarity with engineering responsibilities by including a list of community projects, volunteer work, and university activities to which you've dedicated your time. For each project listed, highlight your contributions that are most relevant to a manufacturing engineer's duties.
Being able to improve a company’s manufacturing operations is the goal of manufacturing engineers, and the skills that you highlight on your resume should reflect that. Use the list on the left to get an idea of the types of accomplishments you should be focusing on (along with the templates above), and tailor your resume appropriately for your background.
Having the ability to determine when something is out of place - using either technical tools or a hands-on assessment - is what you should aim to demonstrate as a manufacturing engineer. Pick out the skills that match your experience and work them into the body of your resume (including in the summary, if you choose to include one). Make sure to list your technical skills and techniques in a separate skill bank.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Manufacturing Engineer job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Once you've selected a basic template to work with based on your experiences and the position you're applying for, think about past employers where you performed responsibilities that are most relevant to being a manufacturing engineer. Use the skills list above to outline those responsibilities, and then select a strong action verb to pair with it. The action verb should lead the bullet point to provide an impactful impression to the hiring manager.
For more related action verbs, visit Engineering Action Verbs.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become a Manufacturing Engineer, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on a Manufacturing Engineer resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Manufacturing Engineer resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
