Maintenance Technician CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a CV for a multi-skilled maintenance engineer at a food factory. The name and employers are made up. Look at what each job states: the equipment, the voltages and control systems, the CMMS, and a downtime or PPM number. An engineering manager reads it in that order.

Engineering and maintenance managers are usually short-staffed and reading CVs between breakdowns. They want to know how fast you can be useful on their equipment without supervision.

• Trade coverage. Electrical (what voltage, and your 18th Edition), controls (which PLC brand), mechanical (bearings, gearboxes, alignment), fluid power, welding, HVAC or plumbing. Multi-skilled engineers who can do electrical and mechanical are the hardest to find, so make both visible.
• Equipment match. Packaging lines, CNC machines, conveyors and palletisers, boilers and chillers, housing repairs and building services. Name the machine types and brands you have actually opened up.
• Numbers that show results, not tasks. Downtime percentage, PPM completion, mean time to repair, work orders per week, repeat failures you eliminated. One or two per job is enough.
• Safety and availability. Lock-off isolation, permit-to-work, forklift, confined space, injury record, and whether you will work rotating shifts, nights or call-out. A manager filling a night-shift gap reads that line first.

“I skip to the skills list and look for a voltage and a PLC brand. Then I go back and check whether the bullets prove it: a downtime number, a rebuild, a real troubleshooting story. Generic 'performed preventive maintenance' CVs go to the bottom.”

A personal statement works once you have a year or more in maintenance. Use a career objective when you are leaving college, an apprenticeship, the armed forces or an assistant role and need to point at the job you want. In either case, the first two lines carry your trades, your equipment types and your availability.

Maintenance CVs fail because they list the job description ("carried out planned and reactive maintenance"). Every engineer did that. Turn each duty into the equipment, the method and the number.

List 12 to 15 skills, grouped by trade, and be exact about brands and voltages. The skills section is where the ATS and the manager both look for a match with their site or property.

• Electrical: 400V three-phase and 230V single-phase, motors and motor control, inverters (Siemens SINAMICS, ABB, Danfoss), contactors and relays, control wiring, reading schematics, multimeter and insulation resistance testing, 18th Edition (BS 7671).
• Controls and automation: Siemens S7 (S7-1200, S7-1500, legacy S7-300) or Allen-Bradley PLCs, HMI panels, sensors and photo-eyes, servo drives, basic robot cell I/O; say "fault-find" versus "program" honestly.
• Mechanical: bearings, gearboxes, chains, belts, couplings, shaft alignment (dial indicator, laser), pumps and seals, conveyors, pneumatics and hydraulics, compressed air systems, welding (MIG, TIG, MMA) and fabrication.
• Building systems (facilities and housing roles): AHUs and split systems, boilers and hot water cylinders (gas work only if Gas Safe registered), plumbing repairs, carpentry, plastering and tiling, door entry and access control, building management systems (Trend, Siemens Desigo, Metasys), legionella temperature checks.
• Systems and tools: CMMS (SAP PM, Maximo, eMaint, MaintainX, UpKeep, Fiix), housing repairs systems, thermal imaging camera, vibration pen, ultrasonic leak detector.
• Safety: lock-off isolation and permit-to-work, Electricity at Work Regulations 1989, confined space, working at height, forklift and MEWP (IPAF), COSHH, machine guarding under PUWER 1998, LOLER inspections for lifting equipment.
• Working skills managers screen for: call-out and rotating shift availability, prioritising breakdowns under pressure, clear work order notes, parts sourcing, training apprentices, and a full UK driving licence for multi-site roles.

No licence is needed to work as a maintenance technician or engineer in the UK. Employers look for an apprenticeship or a recognised Level 3 qualification, and a handful of tickets appear in so many adverts that missing them costs you interviews. List each with the awarding body, level and year.

• Apprenticeship and qualifications: a Level 3 Engineering Maintenance apprenticeship (usually 3 to 4 years with an end-point assessment) or the older Advanced Apprenticeship, an NVQ Level 3 in engineering maintenance, or an HNC in electrical or mechanical engineering. This is what "time-served" or "qualified" means in most adverts.
• 18th Edition (BS 7671 Wiring Regulations, usually City & Guilds 2382). Asked for in most multi-skilled and electrical maintenance adverts. If your CV still says 17th Edition, update it after a refresher course; managers notice an out-of-date edition.
• F-Gas certificate. A legal requirement for work on refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump systems containing F-gas refrigerants. Category 1 covers all activities on any size of system and is the one to have.
• IOSH Working Safely or Managing Safely. Not required by law but expected; a NEBOSH General Certificate helps for team leader and engineering supervisor roles.
• Forklift (RTITB, ITSSAR or AITT-accredited) and MEWP (IPAF) training. Your employer still authorises you for its own trucks and site; note the year of your last refresher.
• Housing and building maintenance: asbestos awareness (required for anyone who may disturb asbestos in older buildings), legionella awareness, a DBS check for work in occupied homes, and a Level 2 Property Maintenance Operative apprenticeship where you have one.
• Pressure systems, lifting equipment and gas: compressed air, steam and refrigeration plant falls under the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations 2000 (PSSR) and needs a written scheme of examination, and lifting equipment needs LOLER thorough examinations. A competent person, often an insurer's engineer, does the examinations; supporting them is worth a line. Gas work needs Gas Safe registration, so name it only if you hold it.
• Aircraft maintenance is a different job with a UK Part-66 aircraft maintenance licence from the CAA. If that is your field, use an aircraft maintenance CV, not this one.

Entry-level engineers come from three places: a Level 3 engineering maintenance apprenticeship or college course, an operator or assistant role in a factory, or the armed forces. Managers hire at this level for aptitude and safety habits, so your CV needs to prove hands-on hours, not job titles.

1. 1Career objective first: the trades you trained in, hours of hands-on workshop time, and the shift you can work.
2. 2Education above experience if it is recent: diploma, apprenticeship or HNC, key units (motor control, PLCs, hydraulics, industrial wiring) and workshop hours. Include a final project with the equipment named.
3. 3Rewrite operator, assistant, HVAC installer, vehicle technician or armed forces bullets around maintenance tasks: PPMs done, components replaced, faults found, work orders closed, tools used.
4. 4Tickets you can earn before the first job: 18th Edition (a short course with an exam), IOSH Working Safely, asbestos awareness, forklift through a previous employer or a training provider, Emergency First Aid at Work.
5. 5One page, plain format, your driving licence status if the role covers multiple sites, and a line about availability for nights, weekends and call-out.

• One page early in your career; two pages is the UK norm for experienced multi-skilled engineers, team leaders and anyone with several site or property types. Never three.
• Order: header, personal statement, skills grouped by trade (so the voltages and PLC brands appear high on the page), experience, qualifications and tickets, education.
• Plain format: one column, standard fonts, no photo, no date of birth, no icons for tools. Manufacturers, FM companies and housing providers parse CVs with Workday, ADP, UKG or iCIMS; tables and two-column layouts lose the skills list.
• Mirror the advert's words: "planned preventive maintenance", "fault-finding", "400V", "PLC", "CMMS", "HVAC", "F-Gas", "18th Edition", "lock-off", "work orders", "conveyors", "boilers", the site or property type, and the shift. If the advert says "maintenance engineer", "maintenance fitter" or "maintenance electrician", use that title in your headline and keep "maintenance technician" in the personal statement.
• Availability line: say it in the personal statement. "Available for 4-on-4-off and a one-week-in-four call-out rota" answers the manager's first question.
• Save as PDF unless the portal asks for Word: Daniel-Whitfield-Maintenance-Engineer-CV.pdf. Bring a printed copy and your certificates (18th Edition, F-Gas, IPAF card) to the interview.

Run the file through the cvplex ATS checker with the advert pasted in. It shows which equipment, system and qualification words from the advert are missing from your CV.