Heating Engineer CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional engineer, written the way a service manager reads. The systems come before the duties, the call numbers are in the bullets, and the registrations sit in their own block because the office cannot send you out without them.

The person reading is usually a service manager who needs a van filled before the heating season starts. They are checking whether they can send you out unsupervised, and how soon.

• Which systems you can actually work on. Gas boilers, oil boilers, LPG, combi, system and regular boilers, warm air, heat pumps, underfloor. A CV that says "heating systems" tells a boiler firm nothing. List the fuel types and the system types.
• Whether you can be sent alone. First-time fix rate, recall rate, calls per day, and whether you have carried an on-call phone. These say more about employability than any adjective.
• Registration and ACS categories. Gas Safe registration with the right categories, OFTEC for oil, G3 for unvented cylinders. Sending you out is a legal question before it is a skills question, because gas work must be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer.
• Driving licence and availability. A clean licence, comfort with an on-call rota and willingness to work the October to March crunch matter more in this trade than in almost any other.

“Tell me what you can commission on your own and how often you go back a second time. If a CV gives me the boiler brands and a recall percentage, I book the interview before I finish the page.”

Three or four lines. Years, systems, one performance number, and your top registration. Put the fuel type in the first sentence, because that is the filter.

Anyone can replace a part the last engineer already identified. The bullets that get you hired show a fault you found, the test you used to find it, and what happened after.

This is the block a service manager reads first, so put it near the top if your registrations are strong. Use the exact names.

• Gas Safe Register: by law, gas work in the UK must be done by a Gas Safe registered engineer. List your registration and the ACS categories on your ID card (for example CCN1, CENWAT, CKR1, HTR1), not just "Gas Safe registered".
• ACS reassessment: categories run for five years. Give the reassessment date so the reader knows they are current, and say whether you hold domestic or commercial categories.
• OFTEC registration for oil, and HETAS for solid fuel where it is relevant. Name the OFTEC courses you hold rather than just "OFTEC trained".
• Unvented hot water (G3) and Water Regulations (WRAS) certificates: needed for cylinder work and widely asked for on combined plumbing and heating jobs.
• Heat pump and low-carbon qualifications: a Level 3 heat pump award, F-Gas certification if you work on refrigerant circuits, and experience on MCS-certified installations. The shift towards low-carbon heating is pushing more firms to ask for them.
• Manufacturer training: Worcester Bosch, Vaillant, Baxi, Ideal, Viessmann, Glow-worm. Naming the brands you are trained on is one of the strongest signals on this CV, because firms carry specific lines.
• Gas licences from other countries do not transfer to the Gas Safe Register. If you trained abroad, list that as past experience and add the UK assessments you have passed or are working towards.

Add your driving licence status and whether it is clean. Almost every advert in this trade asks, and candidates who leave it out get asked in the screening call anyway.

Service managers hire for the systems on their patch. A short, specific equipment block often beats the whole skills section. Group it so a reader can scan it in five seconds.

• Heat sources: combi, system and regular gas boilers, oil-fired boilers, condensing and modulating boilers, LPG boilers, warm air units, air source heat pumps, water heaters, unit heaters.
• Distribution: radiators and TRVs, two-pipe and microbore systems, underfloor heating with PEX manifolds, zone valves and wiring centres, circulating pumps, expansion vessels, open vented and sealed systems.
• Controls and safeties: programmers, room and cylinder thermostats, weather compensation, pressure relief valves, flame supervision devices, ignition and PCB diagnosis, low pressure switches.
• Test instruments: flue gas analyser, digital manometer, multimeter, clamp meter, inspection camera, CO detector, smoke pump for oil, draught gauge.
• Fabrication: copper soldering and press fittings, steel gas pipe, PEX and multilayer pipe, threading, CSST where the installation allows it.

If your work is mostly oil, say so in the headline. Oil-fired heating is concentrated in homes off the gas grid, and firms with oil customers on the books will call a candidate who names it.

With no heating seasons behind you, the CV has to prove three things: you are on the qualification route, you can hold a meter, and you will turn up at 7am in February.

1. 1Get asbestos awareness and, if you can, your Level 2 plumbing qualification before you apply. They are early filters, and having them already puts you above most other entry applicants.
2. 2Count your college hours: "640 workshop hours on gas, electrics and plumbing" is real training, so write it as a number instead of naming the course only.
3. 3List everything you have physically done, even as a mate: stripped a burner, replaced an ignition electrode, changed a pump, ran PEX, cleared a condensate trap, carried boilers up loft ladders.
4. 4Put reliability facts on the page: clean driving licence, no restrictions, comfortable on call, able to carry heavy appliances safely, own hand tools.
5. 5Add any adjacent work that transfers. Plumber's mate, appliance repair, vehicle mechanic and electrician's mate all read well, because they show meter work, fault finding and customer contact.

One page. Reverse chronological. No photo and no date of birth. Trade employers scan for registration names and equipment, so keep those in plain text rather than in a graphic or a sidebar column.

• Mirror the advert language: boiler, central heating, combi, condensing, flue gas analysis, gas pipework, tightness testing, Gas Safe, ACS, OFTEC, unvented, service call, first-time fix, recall rate, planned maintenance, on-call, breakdown.
• Larger contractors, housing associations and energy companies use applicant tracking systems, so use one column, standard headings, and a PDF named FirstName-LastName-Heating-Engineer.pdf.
• Put registrations and qualifications above education. Your Gas Safe registration is the reason you can be sent out; your college certificate is background.
• Give van-level facts: area covered, calls per day, whether you had your own van, and the software you invoiced in (Commusoft, Joblogic, BigChange).
• If your work is seasonal, group the summers rather than leaving gaps. Many heating engineers do bathroom installs or new-build work in summer, which is normal and worth naming.