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Want a stronger resume? Use our extensive library of professional resume examples as practical starting guides. You’ll also find ready-made content with our helpful Resume Builder – simple click, customize, and download.

Find out what is the best resume for you in our Ultimate Resume Format Guide.

How to Format a Solar Engineer Resume

A solar engineer is highly trained and specialty-focused: You can format your resume to focus on work experience or technical skills and training. If you’re interested in the first approach, use a timeline-driven resume format like the chronological or hybrid resume. Use a chronological format if you have over 10 years of experience or want to highlight multiple job promotions.

Candidate A has six years of experience, so we recommend the hybrid format. This format features the same sections as a chronological resume and features a detailed work history section that lets you demonstrate your gradual career growth and accomplishments. However, it places a brief skills section above your work history so you can demonstrate specialized skills such as industrial solar installations, innovative design contributions or leadership training.

We usually recommend a skills-based approach (the functional resume) if you have less than three years of experience, recently changed careers, or held multiple short-term jobs. However, this skills-focused resume can work well for an experienced or highly trained solar engineer such as Candidate B. Candidate B has five years of experience and could use the hybrid format, like Candidate A, but uses a functional resume to highlight their overall layout, planning and solar engineering skills rather than focus on previous jobs. This allows them to carefully list various impressive and specialized engineering skills.

Hybrid Resume

Candidate A

  • 6 years of experience
  • 2 years at this job
  • BS Engineering

Work History

Solar Engineer, Psolar Psity LLC
January 2021 – present, Tucson, AZ

  • Responsible for the solar PV electrical engineering design work on assigned projects under the guidance of senior staff.
  • Support projects through a complete life cycle, including the feasibility phase, preliminary and detailed design, issue-for-bid, construction, start-up and commissioning.
  • Gather and correlate basic engineering data using established and well-defined procedures.

Functional Resume

Candidate B

  • 5 years of experience
  • 2 years at this job
  • MS Engineering

Professional Skills

Solar System Design

  • Solar PV system design, including array layouts, DC string sizing, equipment layouts and utility interconnections.
  • Design fixed tilt and single-axis tracking installation layouts.
  • Specialize in rooftop, carport and ground-mounted installations.

Solar Engineering

  • Develop solar construction and equipment specifications.
  • Engineer calculations related to NEC maximum system voltage, conductor sizing, overcurrent protection sizing, utility disconnect requirements, voltage drop and conduit sizing.
  • Familiar with DC and low to medium-voltage power distribution design.

Solar Engineer Resume FAQ.

What skills do solar engineers need?

A solar engineer may use the following hard and technical skills during their career:

  1. Electrical engineering
  2. Construction
  3. Building site management
  4. Local building regulations
  5. Renewable energy
  6. System design
  7. Site surveying
  8. Solar PV (photovoltaic) knowledge
  9. Knowledge of design software like AutoCAD, Rhino or 3DS Max

Your solar engineering resume and career can also benefit from strong social skills. Written and verbal communication can help you explain and defend complex designs to clients and colleagues or collaboration skills can help you run construction sites. You can find our master list of the most requested soft resume skills here.

What should I put on my solar engineering resume?

For chronological and hybrid formats, your solar engineering resume will include the following mandatory sections; contact information, resume summary or objective, work history, skills and education. You can optimize your resume by following these tailored tips or visiting our resume writing guide for additional sample sections.

  1. Contact information: Place your full legal name and professional email address, phone number and relevant pages such as a professional website, online portfolio or LinkedIn.
  2. Resume objective or summary: Capture a hiring manager’s attention in the first seven seconds of their review with an impactful introduction. Choose one core accomplishment related to the job posting, such as overseeing the $3 million installation of solar panels with minimal delays or inflated costs, to catch their eye.
  3. Work experience: List your previous job titles, employer, dates of employment and city. Include three to four bullet points of responsibilities or achievements related to each job to help hiring managers measure your qualifications.
  4. Skills: Mention six to eight unique skills not mentioned in the previous sections. These entries can be related to specialized engineering knowledge or crucial collaboration skills.
  5. Education and certification: List your degrees and certifications from the most recent. Include the date issued and the name and address of the institution.

Visit our resume examples to study how job seekers demonstrate multiple skills across these three resume sections.