Physicist CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a two-page industry CV for a physicist about five years past the PhD. Notice what comes first: measurement techniques and instruments, then projects with a result attached. The name, employers and universities are invented. The numbers are the kind you can pull from your own lab notebook, run logs and papers.

This is the question most physics job seekers get wrong, and it costs interviews on both sides. The two documents are not the same and they are not interchangeable.

If you are applying to both worlds at once, keep two files and never send the wrong one. An appointment panel reading a two-page industry CV assumes you have no record. A semiconductor hiring manager reading an eight-page academic CV assumes you cannot summarise.

• Can you run the technique they need? A group hiring for thin-film deposition scans for sputtering, ALD, MBE, ellipsometry. If those words appear only inside a paper title, they are easy to miss. Put them in the skills block and in the bullets.
• Did you build things or only analyse them? Industry values physicists who can wire, align, pump down and debug hardware. Say which instrument you built, not just what you measured.
• Can you code at a working level? Python is the default. State the libraries. 'Familiar with Python' reads as no.
• Did anything reach a result outside your own thesis? A yield number, a noise floor, a spec you met, a paper cited, a patent granted, a design a team adopted.

“Physics CVs usually fail on the same thing: five years of beautiful work described with no outcome. Tell me the noise floor before and after. Tell me what the tool cost per wafer. Nobody on my side is going to score your physics; we are asking whether you can finish something and hand it to a team.”

Three to five lines at the top. Field, years, the technique you own, one hard result, and the code you write. Skip a career objective unless you are changing direction and need to explain the jump.

The rewrite pattern is always the same. Name the instrument or method, then the number, then what changed because of it. A physicist bullet without a number reads like an abstract.

One long alphabetical list is useless. Split the block into techniques, instruments, computation and everything else, so a reader hunting for one capability finds it in a second.

• Techniques and methods: interferometry, spectroscopy (Raman, XPS, FTIR), X-ray diffraction, scanning probe microscopy, laser cooling and trapping, transport measurement, radiation detection, design of experiments, uncertainty analysis.
• Instruments and hardware: dilution refrigerator, cryostats, vacuum chambers and pumps, lock-in amplifiers, oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, vacuum deposition (sputtering, evaporation, ALD), optical benches, FPGA and data acquisition hardware.
• Computation: Python (NumPy, SciPy, pandas, matplotlib, lmfit), C++, MATLAB, Mathematica, LabVIEW, COMSOL, Geant4 or ANSYS, Git, SLURM batch jobs, SQL if you touch data warehouses.
• Regulatory and safety: ionising radiation safety training, laser safety, cryogen and pressure system safety, export control awareness, cleanroom protocol, ITAR-relevant experience if you have it.
• Working skills that get named in physics adverts: technical writing, grant and proposal writing, working with engineers, mentoring, presenting to people who are not physicists.

On an academic CV you list everything. On a two-page industry CV you compress. Use a single line of counts near the top, then a short 'Selected publications' block at the bottom with the two or three items closest to the job.

Never pad. A poster from a regional undergraduate symposium listed next to a Physical Review paper makes the whole list look weak. Label an arXiv preprint as a preprint.

Medical physics hiring is registration-gated in a way the rest of physics is not, so the top of the CV looks different. Clinical departments want to see HCPC registration and your training route before anything else.

• HCPC registration as a clinical scientist, which in medical physics usually follows the NHS Scientist Training Programme (STP) or an equivalence route. Write the specialism, such as radiotherapy physics or nuclear medicine, and the year, or write 'STP final year, HCPC registration expected 2027' if you are mid-process.
• Your training route: an STP post with its accredited master's, or another recognised clinical scientist training scheme. Name it. Many adverts screen on it before a human reads the file.
• Statutory roles. Medical Physics Expert (MPE) or Radiation Protection Adviser (RPA) recognition is separate from HCPC registration, so list it where you hold it.
• Clinical equipment by vendor and model: linear accelerators, treatment planning systems, brachytherapy afterloaders, CT simulators.
• QA programmes you have run, named the way the field names them, such as linac QA to IPEM guidance or patient-specific IMRT QA.

You have more than you think. Postgraduate research is work experience: you ran equipment, hit deadlines, managed a budget and trained people. Write it as a job, not as a course of study.

1. 1Put a Technical Skills block directly under the personal statement, before education. It gets you past the keyword scan.
2. 2List your PhD or undergraduate research as an experience entry with a job title (PhD Researcher, Undergraduate Research Assistant), the lab, the dates and bullets with numbers.
3. 3Add a Projects section for anything you built outside the thesis: a teaching lab instrument, an open-source analysis package, a summer research placement.
4. 4Include internships, lab demonstrating and mechanical workshop training. Employers reading a first-job CV want evidence you can work with other people and with your hands.
5. 5Keep it to one or two pages until you have a few years of work behind you.

• Length: one to two pages for a BSc or MSc with under 5 years of work, two pages after a PhD plus a few years. A full academic CV has no page limit and follows the department's instructions instead.
• File: PDF unless the advert asks for a Word file. Single column. Standard headings (Personal statement, Skills, Experience, Education, Publications). No photo, no date of birth, no marital status on a UK CV.
• Notation: write Greek letters and units in plain text where you can. 'per root hertz' survives every parser; the symbol version may not. Superscripts often flatten, so '10^8' is safer than a formatted exponent.
• Keywords: mirror the advert's exact technique names, instrument brands and software. If it says 'thin film deposition (PVD/ALD)', use those words.
• Security vetting: if a defence, nuclear or government lab job needs it, state your status plainly ('SC cleared, 2025' or 'eligible for SC clearance'). Do not overstate a lapsed one.