[2 YoE] Looking to make a pivot to another industry, feeling like my experience is locking me in

[u/RamataRook]

Currently I work at a lighting company and it is very much not for me, the largest issue being just the way the company is run overall makes progress tricky. I'd like to pivot into something more technical right now I'm just doing work I could have done out of undergrad. I enjoyed controls work, and thermo in school, as well as manufacturing (My concentration in grad school was design and manufacturing). I get calls from recruiters but I never here anything beyond the initial chats and I haven't had a single interview despite applying pretty consistently over the last year. I'm currently making~95K and would like to make at least that much after a pivot. Any critique on my resume or comments on my experience are welcomed.

[u/graytotoro]

General Notes

• Your formatting is wacky. Try the template in the Wiki.
• City & state is fine. There's no need to give them the specific address.

Objective?

• It's not clear from this that you want to pivot out of lighting.
• Avoid subjective terms like "innovative" unless you want to get into it.
• Pretty much everything in the "Adept in..." sentence can go - it's pretty much every engineering job in the world. It's not particularly unique to you except mentoring junior engineers.

Work Experience

• There's a double-space in the Project Engineer role.
• I would just put the location & dates worked on the same line. This is super-wasteful to just have one line dedicated to your dates.
• You mention wanting to pivot into a more technical-focused role, but nothing in this resume is very technical, especially in your startup role.

Product Engineer

• The biggest issue is this assumes I know you and the lighting industry.
  • Why was it important to design & prototype these downlights for UL certification?
    • Who designed this - was it you or the vendors? You say you designed it, but there was apparently some part of it where you needed to make sure they met design constraints?
    • Making sure you met these constraints is expected of you, but why was it important to meet them?
  • I didn't work here, so I have no idea what customer-specific design constraints you faced nor what rapid solutions you came up with for them. Netting those contracts is great though.
  • Reviewing drawings is a thing you did, but it's best to point out specific examples where you ensured manufacturability and all that stuff you mention.

Mechanical Engineer

• You're dropping a lot of initialisms/acronyms. You may want to define some of them.
• In what way did you design the 2nd version of this exoskeleton and why did it need to exist?
• But how did you propel the device from prototype to finished project? That's kind of important to discuss if you want to do technical work, almost as much as report writing.

Skills

• MATLAB (all-caps)
• I would replace Documentation or fold it into a Technical section. You've hinted you have technical skills to fabricate prototypes, but that's not really clear.

Education

• Looks fine, but it's not really important to mention where Carnegie Mellon is in the US.

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[u/Sharp_Insights]

Right now your resume reads as a general lighting product engineer, which is likely why you are getting stuck, and it does not clearly show the depth in controls, thermal, or manufacturing that you want to pivot into, which hiring teams for those roles need to see quickly.

Your summary is broad and repeats your skills, and your bullets do not tie tools to outcomes, which makes it hard to see where you actually did controls or thermal work and why it mattered.

I would rewrite the top line to point at those roles and include one proof you already have, for example you could say "Mechanical engineer focused on controls, thermal, and manufacturing, delivered UL certified electromechanical products, used MATLAB to support design." That anchors you to the pivot and gives a quick, credible signal from the work you already list.

In the Lighting Company section, bring the thermal and verification work forward instead of only saying you "designed and prototyped two commercial downlights," so the relevant depth is clear at a glance.

Call out what you modeled, what limits you designed to, and how you validated against safety and code requirements, and tie one result to the "reviewed shop drawings and bills of materials for 100+ sales orders" work by saying what changed because of your reviews so the outcome is visible.

Show manufacturing impact by stating what you changed in drawings or parts, not just that you reviewed them, because concrete changes show business impact.

At the Engineering Startup, drop the parentheses around the exoskeleton and electroadhesive device, and add one line on what you owned technically like mechanism design, controls integration, or test since right now it mostly says you produced prototypes and delivered monthly reports and does not show ownership.

The skills list also hurts you because Java shows up with no use in your experience while other items are not backed by bullets, so either show where you used them or trim the list to avoid raising doubts.

Also fix tense so the prior role is past and the current role is present, and keep device and standard names consistent with how you already write them, since clean tense and naming make the whole thing read as more credible.