LaTeX CV/resume templates for PhD students and researchers
—from ATS-optimized industry resumes to full academic CVs.
| Jake's Format Industry / ATS-safe · pdfLaTeX |
Deedy Format Industry / high-density · XeLaTeX |
Awesome-CV Format Academic / full CV · XeLaTeX |
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Hey! I'm Hyungtae Lim, a robotics researcher who studies SLAM/perception/scene understanding. I achived my Ph.D at KAIST in South Korea, and recently wrapped up a postdoc at MIT, and just landed a job at a big tech company. While preparing my industry applications, I quickly realized there's a huge discrepancy between what a big tech company needs and what academia expects. An academic CV is long, publication-heavy, and formatted for a human reviewer who cares about your research story. An industry resume needs to survive an ATS filter first — and a lot of the LaTeX tricks we use in academic CVs (custom fonts, multi-column layouts, fancy glyphs) silently break those parsers before a recruiter ever sees your name. This repo collects the templates I used and adapted, organized by use case, so you don't have to figure that out the hard way. |
The biggest mistake PhD students make when applying to industry is submitting a publication-driven CV. Here is the mindset shift:
| Academic CV | Industry Resume |
|---|---|
| "I published 10 papers at ICRA, RSS, RA-L…" | "I built X system that does Y, deployed on Z platforms" |
| Publications are the story | Projects are the story — publications are a one-line signal |
| Venue and novelty matter | Impact, scale, and real-world deployment matter |
| Readers are domain experts | First reader is an ATS parser, then a recruiter, then an engineer |
Another common mistake: listing TA and academic service roles in Experience. Industry hiring managers skip these — they are looking for engineering impact, not classroom administration. If you want to convey mentorship or leadership, fold it into a bullet under your main research role (e.g., "Mentored 5+ graduate researchers, contributing to 4+ published papers").
The "Selected Projects" section is the most important thing to customize. For every application, ask: which of my projects is most relevant to this specific team's work? An AV perception team wants to see detection/segmentation work. A mapping team wants SLAM/HD map work. Swap your projects accordingly — do not send the same resume everywhere.
Open-source projects with GitHub stars are particularly powerful: they prove not just that you can build something, but that others rely on your code — which is exactly what production teams want to hire.
See GUIDELINES.md for the full CV→Resume conversion guide.
Targeting industry (including big tech)? Use
jakes-format/first. Big tech companies (Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc.) route resumes through applicant tracking system (ATS) before a human ever reads them. Jake's format is plain pdfLaTeX with no custom fonts, no multi-column layout, and no special glyphs — all of which are common ATS failure points. If you prefer a denser, two-column layout and are confident the company accepts it,deedy-format/is a strong alternative.Applying for a PhD program or academic position? Use
research-cv/— it supports multi-page layouts, full publication lists, and the detailed academic history that faculty committees expect.
| Template | Best For | Pages | Columns | Engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awesome-CV | Faculty/postdoc applications, academic CV | Multi-page | 1 | XeLaTeX |
| Jake's | Industry SWE/internship applications | 1 | 1 | pdfLaTeX |
| Deedy | Experienced tech professionals | 1 | 2 | XeLaTeX |
A comprehensive, multi-page academic CV based on posquit0/Awesome-CV. Best suited for faculty applications and postdoc positions where you need to present a full publication list, research statements, and detailed academic history.
Includes:
cv.tex— Main CV with modular sections (education, publications, honors, etc.)cv/— Individual section files for easy editingawesome-cv.cls— The class file (XeLaTeX required)
Key features:
- Modular section files — edit each section independently
- Built-in support for publication lists with citation counts and GitHub stars
- Profile photo option
- Customizable accent colors
- BibTeX integration for references
How to compile:
cd awesome-cv-format
xelatex cv.texA clean, single-page resume template by Jake Gutierrez. The most popular LaTeX resume template on the internet — widely used for industry software engineering positions and internship applications.
Includes:
resume.tex— Single self-contained file
Key features:
- ATS-optimized — plain pdfLaTeX output passes big tech ATS systems (no custom fonts, no multi-column layout, no special glyphs that confuse parsers)
- Single-page, single-column layout
- Clean section dividers with
\titlerule - Custom commands for consistent formatting (
\resumeSubheading,\resumeItem, etc.) - Easy to customize fonts (sans-serif and serif options commented out)
- Uses standard
pdflatex— no special engine needed
How to compile:
cd jakes-format
pdflatex resume.texA modern two-column resume template created by Debarghya Das. Popular among experienced software engineers and tech professionals who need to pack substantial experience into a single page with high information density. See also: Deedy Resume Guide.
Includes:
resume.tex— Single self-contained file
Key features:
- Distinctive two-column layout: narrow left (1/3) for education/skills, wide right (2/3) for experience/projects
- High information density while maintaining readability
- Clean typography with clear visual hierarchy
\runsubsectionand\descriptcommands for consistent entry formatting\tightemizeenvironment for compact bullet points
Note: This template requires the deedy-resume.cls class file. Download it from the original repository.
How to compile:
cd deedy-format
xelatex resume.tex- Awesome-CV: CC BY-SA 4.0 (original by Claud D. Park)
- Jake's Resume: MIT License (original by Jake Gutierrez, based on sb2nov/resume)
- Deedy Resume: Apache 2.0 (original by Debarghya Das)