Resumes in LaTeX

Writing a resume can be a time consuming task involving many rounds of proofreading, recollection, and wordsmithing. Alongside the content, the format of a resume carries a lot of weight. Many people start out writing their resume in Microsoft Word. As their resume evolves, they begin to fiddle with settings buried deep within Words’ menus. It can become tedious.

You may have heard of LaTeX. LaTeX gives you fine-grained control that, at least for a programmer, may be easier to grok than clicking through a series of nested menus. This article takes a look at a LaTeX resume template in the style of Gayle McDowell’s “This Is What a GOOD Resume Should Look Like”. You’ll also see the tools and workflow that simplify resume development in LaTeX.

The Template

To be clear, the template given here isn’t golden but it’s a solid starting point for many. This resume template’s target audience is tech recruiters. That said, most STEM folks can modify this template to suit their particular audience.

Here’s the template in all its glory. Add, remove, and edit as needed in your text editor or LaTeX IDE:

\documentclass[11pt,letterpaper]{article}

\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage[paper=letterpaper,margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{mathptmx}

\hypersetup{
    pdfcreator={Ivan Guerra},
    pdfproducer={Ivan Guerra},
    pdftitle={Ivan Eduardo Guerra - Resume},
    pdfauthor={Ivan Guerra},
    pdfsubject={Resume},
    colorlinks=true,
    linkcolor=NavyBlue,
    urlcolor=NavyBlue
}

\begin{document}
\newgeometry{top=0.25in, bottom=0.25in, right=0.5in, left=0.5in}

\hrule
\begin{center}
	\begin{LARGE}
		\textbf{Ivan Eduardo Guerra}
	\end{LARGE}
\end{center}
\hrule

\medskip

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
	\begin{flushleft}
		\textbf{Contact Information:}\\
		Location: Los Angeles, CA\\
		Mobile Phone \#: (580) 341-8882\\
		E-mail:
		\href{mailto:ivan.eduardo.guerra@gmail.com}{ivan.eduardo.guerra@gmail.com}
	\end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.46\textwidth}
	\begin{flushright}
		\begin{flushleft}
			\textbf{Social Media:}\\
			Personal Site: \url{www.programmador.com}\\
			GitHub: \url{www.github.com/ivan-guerra}\\
			LinkedIn: \url{www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-guerra}
		\end{flushleft}
	\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}

\medskip

\begin{large}
	\textbf{Professional Experience}
\end{large}

\smallskip \hrule \medskip

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.53\textwidth}
	\begin{flushleft}
		\textbf{Northrop Grumman - Aeronautics Systems}\\
		\textbf{\textit{Principal Software Engineer (Active DoD Secret)}}\\
	\end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.43\textwidth}
	\begin{flushright}
		\textbf{September 2019 - Present}
	\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}

\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]
	\setlength\itemsep{0.2em}
	\item Led a team of 3 in the development of a Cross Channel Data Link in
	      a real-time Linux environment reducing the probability of unmanned
	      air vehicle loss of control by over 10\%.
	\item Tuned real-time Linux systems on both consumer and proprietary
	      hardware solutions in an effort to reduce worst case latencies.
	      Results drove the selection of safety critical vehicle components.
	\item Deployed and benchmarked autocoded Simulink flight models to
	      various embedded ARM devices including NXP's iMX6 and Xilinx's Zynq
	      UltraScale+ MPSoC.
	\item Employed oscilliscopes, multimeters, and other hardware when
	      debugging and benchmarking avionics software.
	\item Accelerated the development of multiple vehicles by creating
	      reusable Linux and Windows device drivers for a variety of sensors
	      including inertial measurement units, air data computers, and motor
	      controllers.
	\item Designed and implemented a vehicle hardware in the loop testbench
	      reducing flight test risk and providing a means to regression
	      test the system.
	\item Negotiated with suppliers on the software specifications for the next
	      generation of flight control computers used in low cost UAV
	      demonstrators. These UAV demonstrators would drive the capture of
	      future contracts.
\end{itemize}

\medskip

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.53\textwidth}
	\begin{flushleft}
		\textbf{Raytheon - Space and Airborne Systems}\\
		\textbf{\textit{Software Engineer II}}\\
	\end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.43\textwidth}
	\begin{flushright}
		\textbf{June 2017 - September 2019}
	\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}

\begin{itemize}[noitemsep,topsep=0pt]
	\setlength\itemsep{0.2em}
	\item Reduced the time needed to identify software defects during flight
	      tests by implementing an air vehicle software instrumentation API in
	      C++.
	\item Improved laser deconfliction system by implementing SAT location
	      caching. The average time to detect an unwanted laser intersection
	      with a satellite improved by an order of magnitude.
	\item Built a Jenkins CI pipeline to isolate faults and give developers
	      early feedback on code changes.
\end{itemize}

\medskip

\begin{large}
	\textbf{Education}
\end{large}

\smallskip \hrule \medskip

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.5\textwidth}
	\begin{flushleft}
		\textbf{University of Oklahoma: Norman, OK}\\

	\end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.46\textwidth}
	\begin{flushright}
		\textbf{Fall 2013 - Spring 2017}

	\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}
\begin{itemize}[topsep=0pt]
	\setlength\itemsep{0.2em}
	\item B.S.E. in Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Spanish;
	      Overall GPA: \textbf{3.95}/{4.00}
\end{itemize}

\medskip

\begin{large}
	\textbf{Languages and Technologies}
\end{large}

\smallskip \hrule \medskip

\begin{itemize}[topsep=0pt]
	\setlength\itemsep{0.2em}
	\item \textbf{Languages}: C/C++ (proficient),
	      Python (proficient),
	      Bash (proficient),
	      Rust (competent)
	\item \textbf{Tools and Platforms}: Linux,
	      Realtime Linux,
	      Embedded ARM,
	      FreeRTOS,
	      Docker,
	      GoogleTest,
	      CMake,
	      Git,
	      Subversion,
	      Atlassian Stack
	\item \textbf{Protocols and Standards}: UART,
	      I2C,
	      SPI,
	      CAN,
	      PWM,
	      RS422/485,
	      TCP/UDP,
	      MIL-1553,
	      ARINC 429,
	      WOSA,
	      STANAG 4586,
	      UCI
\end{itemize}

\medskip

\begin{large}
	\textbf{Technical Projects}
\end{large}

\smallskip \hrule \medskip

\begin{itemize}[topsep=0pt]
	\setlength\itemsep{0.2em}
	\item \textbf{\href{https://github.com/ivan-guerra/gsync.git}{gsync}}
	      (2023). GPIO driven synchronization on a real-time Linux system. C/C++,
	      Bash
	\item \textbf{\href{https://github.com/ivan-guerra/steganography.git}{steganography}}
	      (2023). An image based steganography command line tool. C++, Boost
	\item \textbf{\href{https://github.com/ivan-guerra/cpplox.git}{cpplox}}
	      (2022). A C++ implementation of the Lox programming language. C++,
	      Python
	\item \textbf{
		      \href{https://github.com/ivan-guerra/cosmo.git}{cosmo}}
	      (2022). Custom x86 operating system written from scratch. C/C++, x86
	      ASM, Bash
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

Here’s a capture showing how the LaTeX source looks when compiled into a PDF:

$Resume as PDF$

Building the Resume

You can compile LaTeX source into various document formats. One of the most popular and appropriate for resumes is PDF. A frustrating aspect of working with LaTeX is the sheer number of packages required to get a working distribution capable of taking a vanilla *.tex and transforming it into a PDF.

Docker can prove useful when containerizing a toolchain. Containerizing the over 1GB in dependencies LaTeX requires is a good idea. The following Dockerfile does just that:

FROM ubuntu:latest

ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install --yes \
        texlive-base \
        texlive-latex-extra

RUN mkdir -p /mnt/resume

WORKDIR /mnt/resume

You can build a LaTeX Docker image with the following command:

docker build . -t latex

Now, when you want to edit your resume, you can launch a container with the directory containing your *.tex file mounted as a volume:

docker run \
    --rm \
    -it \
    --privileged \
    -v $(pwd):/mnt/resume \
    latex:latest

This command will drop you in a Bash shell within the container. The command assumes your *.tex file is in your current working directory. You call the pdflatex program from within the container to transform the *.tex source into a PDF:

pdflatex ivan_guerra_resume.tex

The Workflow

Below is a summary of the resume edit-compile-view cycle:

Place the *.tex file and the Dockerfile in a common directory.
Build the latex Docker image.
Launch a latex container with the directory containing your LaTeX source files mounted as a volume (see the docker run command in the previous section).
Open the *.tex file in a text editor on the host.
Edit the document.
Compile the *.tex file into a PDF from the container shell using pdflatex.
View the output PDF in a PDF viewer or browser on the host. You can leave the document open in your viewer so that when you run pdflatex you see the updates instantly take effect.
Back to (5).

Conclusion

Writing a resume can be hard. You can ease the pain of formatting your resume using powerful tools such as LaTeX. This article provides you with a template resume and workflow for building your next resume in LaTeX. Hope this helps in your next job search!

You can find this template along with many of the scripts and sources referenced in this article on GitHub under resume.

The Template#

Building the Resume#

The Workflow#

Conclusion#

The Template

Building the Resume

The Workflow

Conclusion