Heating and Ventilation Engineer CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a domestic and light-commercial service engineer who started as an engineer's mate, moved into installs and now runs his own van on service calls. The name and employers are made up. If you are an installer or a first-year apprentice, keep the layout and change the scope; there are personal statements and a trainee section further down.

Service managers and the recruiters who hire for HVAC contractors told us they scan for the same four things. Put them where they can be found without hunting.

• F-Gas certificate and which category. Category I is the one they want, because it covers leak checking, recovery, installation and servicing on systems of any size. Category II, III or IV is fine for the work it covers, but say which. No F-Gas certificate means you cannot legally work on refrigerant circuits, so for a service or install role it is the first filter. If you work on gas boilers, Gas Safe registration with your ACS categories is the second.
• Equipment you have actually worked on. Domestic split systems, heat pumps and boilers are the baseline. VRF, packaged rooftop units, air handling units, chillers, cold rooms and commercial kitchen extraction each open different jobs. Name them.
• Whether you can diagnose or only replace parts. A recall rate, a first-time-fix rate, or a bullet about charging by superheat and subcooling tells them you can. "Fault-found HVAC systems" tells them nothing.
• Driving licence. Almost every HVAC job puts you in a company van. Write "full UK driving licence, clean" in the header or qualifications if it is true. If you have points, be ready to say how many; the company's insurer will check anyway.

“I look for the refrigerant certification, then the equipment list, then any sign the person can find a problem instead of just swapping a capacitor. A callback number on a CV is rare, and when I see one I call that person the same day.”

Three or four lines under your name. Say your role and years, the equipment, your certificates, and one number. People also search for an "HVAC engineer career objective"; the trainee example below is written as one, but it still leads with what you can do.

Write each bullet as: what you did, on what equipment, how many, and how well. Use the words a service manager uses (diagnose, recover, evacuate, braze, commission, charge). Here are seven common HVAC CV lines rewritten.

List 10 to 15 skills and keep them concrete. "HVAC" is not a skill on an HVAC CV. Split them into three groups so a manager and an applicant tracking system both find what they need.

Technical skills:

• Diagnostics on split, multi-split and VRF systems, air source heat pumps, packaged and rooftop units
• Gas boiler service and repair: ignition, flame sensing, fans, gas valves, diverter valves, PCBs, flue gas analysis
• Refrigerant charging by superheat and subcooling; name the refrigerants (R-32, R-410A, R-454B, R-290, R-134a, R-404A)
• Refrigerant recovery, evacuation and nitrogen pressure testing
• Brazing and soldering with a nitrogen purge
• Electrical fault-finding: controls, contactors, capacitors, EC fan motors, three-phase supplies, safe isolation
• Airflow: duct pressure, air balancing, ductwork sizing, heat loss calculations for heat pumps
• Controls: heating controls, smart thermostats, air-con controllers, basic building management systems (BMS)
• Commercial refrigeration (if you have it): cold rooms, display cabinets, ice machines, pack systems

Tools and software (list the ones you actually use):

• Digital manifold and probes: Fieldpiece, Testo, Refco
• Micron gauge, vacuum pump, recovery machine, refrigerant scales
• Flue gas analyser, manometer, clamp meter and multimeter (Kane, Testo, Fluke)
• Oxy-acetylene or oxy-propane brazing kit, pipe tools, press fittings
• Job management software: Joblogic, simPRO, Commusoft, BigChange
• Heat loss and design tools: manufacturer selection software, heat loss calculators
• Ductwork and ventilation installation, sheet-metal basics, flexible duct

Skills managers value but rarely see written: showing up in a July heatwave or a January cold snap when the board is full of breakdowns, keeping the van stocked, and writing a job sheet a homeowner can understand. Show those in bullets with numbers instead of listing "reliable" and "communication".

There is no single licence for HVAC work in the UK. Refrigerant work needs an F-Gas certificate, gas work needs Gas Safe registration, and the rest is qualifications employers expect. Here is how each one should appear on your CV.

• F-Gas certificate (required by law to work on refrigerant circuits in air conditioning, refrigeration and heat pumps). Categories: I (all activities, any system size), II (installation and servicing of smaller systems, plus leak checks), III (recovery from smaller systems), IV (leak checks only). Write it as "F-Gas certificate, Category I, 2024". The business you work for also needs an F-Gas company certificate.
• Gas Safe registration (required by law to work on gas appliances such as boilers). You need ACS qualifications for each type of appliance, and your Gas Safe ID card lists them. Write "Gas Safe registered, ACS: CCN1, CENWAT" with your categories, and keep the renewal dates current.
• Vocational qualifications: NVQ Level 3 in Heating and Ventilating, or a Level 3 refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump qualification or apprenticeship. Give the level, awarding body and year.
• CSCS card. Not a legal requirement, but most commercial contractors and main contractors expect one before you go on site, and it needs the CITB Health, Safety and Environment test. Add IPAF or PASMA if you work at height on access platforms or towers.
• Heat pump and renewables. A recognised heat pump installation qualification, plus an unvented hot water (G3) certificate if you fit cylinders. MCS certification belongs to the business, not to you, but say if you have worked under an MCS-certified installer; it matters for grant-funded installs.
• Driving licence. Put "full UK driving licence, clean" in the qualifications block or header. Recent manufacturer training (Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Vaillant, Worcester Bosch and others) goes here too.

Education: list your college course, NVQ or apprenticeship with the provider and year. If you learned on the job, list your GCSEs (especially English and maths) and let your certificates and years carry the weight.

Contractors hire engineer's mates and apprentices constantly, especially before the summer air-con season and the autumn heating rush. They do not expect field experience. They expect some evidence you can handle ladders, lofts and rooftops, a driving licence if you have one, ideally an F-Gas certificate, and a reason to believe you will show up. Here is how to build a one-page CV from that.

1. 1Put your F-Gas certificate (with category) directly under your name if you hold one. It is a short course run by approved training centres and colleges, and having it before you apply puts you ahead of most trainees.
2. 2Write a three-line career objective that says what you have (course, F-Gas, CSCS card, driving licence, tools) and the role you want (engineer's mate, apprentice, install crew).
3. 3List your college course or training with the hours and the hands-on skills you practised: brazing, recovery, boiler or heat pump commissioning, wiring a controller, ductwork. Name the equipment brands in the workshop if you know them.
4. 4Turn any physical, outdoor, customer-facing or mechanical job into evidence: warehouse, landscaping, roofing, motor factors, the Armed Forces, restaurant kitchens. Use numbers (hours a week, weights lifted, customers served).
5. 5Keep it to one page. Skip the clichés ("hard-working, motivated individual") and let your certificates, training hours and the tools you own speak.

One to two pages. Most engineers fit on one; two pages is normal in the UK if you have commercial, refrigeration and supervisory experience that a specific job asks for. No photo, no date of birth, no marital status and no full address: town and postcode area are enough. A plain single-column layout with clear headings reads best both for a manager on a phone and for an applicant tracking system (ATS), the software that many mid-sized contractors and all national facilities and home-services companies use to filter CVs.

• File type: send a PDF unless the advert asks for Word. A scanned image cannot be read by ATS software. A short cover letter or email is normal alongside the CV.
• Section order: header with your F-Gas category and Gas Safe status, personal statement (or career objective), qualifications, experience, skills, education. Trainees: move your course and training hours above experience.
• Dates: month and year for each job. Gaps are common in HVAC (seasonal work, contract ends) and managers understand them; a one-line note such as "contract ended, returned in spring" is fine.
• Keywords to mirror from the advert: "F-Gas", "Gas Safe", "domestic" or "commercial", "service" or "install", the equipment types listed, "PPM", "refrigerant", "brazing", "fault-finding", "on-call" and the software they name. Use the exact spelling they use ("HVAC/R" versus "HVACR").

If an advert mentions an on-call rota, summer overtime or weekend work, say in your personal statement that you have done it. Service managers are hiring for the peak, not for the quiet weeks.