Test Engineer Resume Samples + Expert Tips for 2022

It all started, when we started writing our this extensive guide on test engineer resumes.

We hit a north star after talking to 100s of recruiters, QA leaders and insanely successful test engineers. This entire guide is dedicated to what we learned with real test engineer resume examples.

Here’s what you can expect to takeaway from this guide:

• See what a perfect test engineer resume looks like (with 3 examples)
• Try an example resume layout that works best for your resume (interactive layouts attached here)
• Make a resume header summary that screams hireable (with good and bad examples)
• Fill in your resume experience like no other applicant can

Test engineer resume examples

Great, now that you know what a pixel perfect resume looks like, let’s see how you can write one for yourself.

How to write a test engineer resume

First thing to consider before you want to start putting everything into a resume builder (you don’t want to do that on a doc) - who is going to read your resume?

Typically there are three people who decides whether you land an interview or not:

• Recruiter
• Head of development, VPE, or a CTO
• QA lead

They all use different criteria to filter your resume as they come from different backgrounds and evaluate your resume based on what they feel is most important:

• Most recruiters have a limited understanding of technology, so they are most likely to filter your resume based on a couple of important keywords and then industry they are from.
• If a Head of development, VPE, or a CTO reviews your resume - they would want to see that their test engineer knows how to enumerate test cases, scale their work, show them the ideal team workflows you’ve worked with, that you can analyze a design, etc.
• A QA lead on the other hand, will consider everything that a Head of dev/VPE/CTO would, but will also try to make sure your testing resume skills are highly related to the job, and you’ve practically demonstrated soft skills in the workplace.

By this time, if you’re wondering how your resume should look, try one of our resume layouts to see if you find something that fits perfectly well for your resume.  

It it helps the most important part of a test engineer’s resume are:

• Resume objective/resume summary
• Your experience as a test engineer
• Your technical skill-set and your soft skills
• Your relevant certifications

How to write a test engineer resume summary

This is something a lot of rf test engineers and software test engineers struggle with. It’s understandable. Writing everything about you in 2-3 lines isn’t an easy thing, especially when you aren’t a copywriter.

Before, we show you some test engineer resume summary examples, we want you to know and what makes a good resume summary:

• A resume summary should be impressive and should reflect your passion as a test engineer (A lot of test engineers have a deep passion for UX).
• A good resume summary for test engineer should also have important keywords that can help a recruiter identify you as the right candidate.
• If possible list down your industry vertical (BFSI, Healthcare, Airline, etc.)

Here are two examples of a typical test engineer resume summary (first one is destined to be rejected):

Now, if you look at both of them, the second one looks a bit better, gives us a lot more context - but still isn’t good enough. As someone who is going to spend a lot of time communicating, bad resume, boring summaries implies rejection.

A QA Lead we spoke to mentioned that if she sees “MS word” listed in the resume summary - the candidate gets rejected for sure.

Now, take a look at this

Notice the difference here.

If you still find it difficult to write one for yourself and are afraid that you might end up writing a bad one - below is a template that you can copy-paste-replace and use:

“[# of years] years work experience as a software test engineer for [Your software/industry]. A proven leader and expert in design, analysis and implementation of testing plans and strategies using [tool], [tool], [tool]. Highly passionate about how testing improves [e.g. UX] of [e.g. mobile applications]”

How to write a test engineer resume experience section

Be it recruiter, a tech leader, or someone from QA - as we spoke to experts we consistently saw that the following makes a good test engineer resume experience:

• Data collection and pattern analysis
• Being able to craft testing strategies from scratch and selecting appropriate tests
• Automation testing procedures and reducing variables
• Communications skills to facilitate smooth workflows
• End to end testing capabilities, especially the ability to be able to predict everything up to UAT

But most test engineer’s write a resume experience like this

Now, take a look at this instead

But, if you specialize into something, consider adding something like this to your resume.

The last two test engineer resume will get hired because someone who’ll read these test engineering resume experiences will know for sure of his/her skills, tools and workflows. On the other hand, someone who reads the first resume experience would struggle to answer:

• What tools did you use?
• What team size did you work on?
• What product were you responsible for?
• What results did you deliver?

When you’re writing your testing resume experience, make sure it’s relevant to the job role. Because, as we wrote before, no matter who’s looking at your testing engineer resume - they’ll all try to see if your resume is relevant.

Test engineer resume skills are a must have for a winning job application

Now that you have 4 sections done to perfection (objective, summary, experience, and resume skills), let’s look into the last important part of your resume - certifications!

How to list resume certifications on your resume

Add these certifications to your resume and it’ll be your 5th star.

Perfect!

But, before you leave, let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far:

• Your resume can be reviewed by a recruiter, Engineering Lead or a QA Lead
• Your resume summary should be extremely impactful
• A good resume experience is highly specific to the role you’re applying to
• Add your skills and certification in a separate section to make sure you stand out