Machine Setter CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a setter with about ten years across a CNC machine shop, an injection moulding plant and a presswork plant. The person and the plants are invented. Swap in your controls, tolerances and set-up times.

Most people searching for a machine setter CV end up reading machine operator advice, and the two jobs pay differently because they are judged differently. If you set machines, do not write an operator CV.

A plant loses more money to slow changeovers and bad first parts than to slow running. Everything on the supervisor's checklist comes from that.

• Machine range and controls: how many machines you can set alone, and on which control. Fanuc, Haas, Mazak, Siemens, Okuma, or press and mould types with tonnage.
• Changeover time: your average, and whether you have improved it. Named methods like single-minute exchange of die (SMED) or pre-staged tooling trolleys read well.
• Quality gate: first-off pass rate, scrap percentage, and whether you can inspect what you set. A setter who cannot read a drawing and use a micrometer is an operator.
• Drawings and tolerances: GD&T (BS 8888 / ISO GPS), the tightest tolerance you have held, and the gauges you use.
• Shift and reliability: setters are needed at shift change and at 3am. Say what rota you can work.

“I do not need to know you pressed cycle start. I need to know you can walk to a cold machine with a job pack, have a good first part in half an hour, and be right about it. Put your set-up time and your first-off pass rate on the page and you go straight to the top of my pile.”

A personal statement if you have setting experience, a career objective if you are moving up from operating. Three or four lines, with a set-up number in them.

Take each duty and add the machine, the number and the outcome. These eight cover most of what setters actually do.

Three groups: what you set, what you measure with, and what you know on paper.

Machines and setting:

• CNC lathes, mills and machining centres (name the controls)
• Tool offsets, work offsets, tool life management and prove-out
• Workholding: chucks, collets, vices, fixtures, soft jaws
• Injection moulding: mould setting, hot runners, process start-up
• Presswork: progressive and transfer die setting, shut height, feed line
• Manual machines: lathe, mill, surface grinder, if you have them
• Robot load and unload cells and part feeders

Measuring and quality:

• Micrometers, callipers, bore gauges, height gauges, dial indicators
• Thread and plug gauges, pin gauges, surface finish comparison
• Coordinate measuring machine, at least basic operation
• First-off inspection and set-up approval
• Statistical process control charts and capability basics
• Non-conforming material handling and containment

Documents and systems:

• Engineering drawing reading and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing
• Set-up sheets, process sheets and job packs
• Quality management system paperwork on the shop floor
• Production reporting in an ERP or MES
• Isolation and lock-off and machine guarding rules (PUWER)
• Continuous improvement work: 5S, changeover reduction, kaizen events

There is no licence to set machines in the UK. Employers use qualifications to shortcut the skills test, so list only the ones you have actually passed.

• NVQs are the qualifications UK machine shops recognise: a Level 2 NVQ Diploma in Performing Engineering Operations (PEO), or a Level 3 NVQ Diploma in Mechanical Manufacturing Engineering with machining units. Name the qualification, the units and the year.
• An engineering apprenticeship at Level 2 or Level 3 is the usual route into setting in larger plants. Give the provider, the apprenticeship title and the year you finished.
• IOSH Working Safely, plus isolation and lock-off training as an authorised person.
• Overhead crane, slinger/signaller and forklift training, usually backed by an employer authorisation. Say so.
• Six Sigma yellow or green belt if you have completed a real project. Say what the project saved.
• Machine builder or tooling supplier training. Write it as 'dealer training, 3 days, Fanuc control set-up' rather than as a certificate name you invent.

Almost every setter used to be an operator. The CV is what convinces a supervisor to give you the set-up you have been asking for.

1. 1Count what you already set. Tool changes, offsets, simple changeovers, even one job family. Put a number and a time on it.
2. 2Get your inspection skills on the page. Micrometers, bore gauges, drawing reading with tolerances. Setters are trusted because they can prove a part is good.
3. 3Take a drawing reading and geometric tolerancing course at a further education college. Twenty-four hours of classroom is enough to list and it comes up in interviews.
4. 4Ask your current shift leader to sign you off on specific set-ups and note the date. 'Signed off on 4 job families by shift leader, 2025' is real evidence.
5. 5Say clearly which shifts you will work. Setters are most needed on nights and at shift change, which is where the vacancies are.

• One page. Two only past 15 years or if you have supervised.
• Reverse-chronological, with the plant type and machine count next to each employer.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status: UK convention.
• Single column, no tables or text boxes, because manufacturing applicant tracking systems still mangle them.
• Put a 'Machines and controls' line under your personal statement. It is the fastest way for a supervisor to match you to an open cell.
• State your shift availability and whether you can be called in. Setters get called in.

Mirror the advert's exact words where they are true: setter-operator, set-up, changeover, prove-out, offsets, first article, first-off, SPC, GD&T, tolerance, mould setting, die setting, tonnage, cycle time, scrap, isolation and lock-off, planned maintenance. If an advert names a control or press brand you have used, put that brand in a bullet, not just in a skills list.