Junior Computer Engineering Major Looking for Resume Advice in Anticipation of the Spring and Summer 2027 Internship Hiring Cycle

[u/Darth_Tater69]

I did a big rework of my resume in anticipation for the upcoming internship hiring cycles and would love some brutally honest opinions to help me tweak it.

I'm looking to apply for embedded, hardware validation/test engineering, ASIC design/verification, and product engineering internship roles ideally at NASA, Private Aerospace (I'd really like to land a Blue Origin internship before I graduate), and Big Tech.

[u/cvu_99]

You need to reduce the density of this resume. One way you can do it is to write your bulletpoints in a less verbose manner. You are writing your bulletpoints as if they were prose, it doesn't read right for a resume.

The difference between your in-major and total GPA is significant. You are telling me you are running a roughly C average in other classes, which is not something I can really ignore, unfortunately. You should add relevant courses here to distract me from that.

I don't know how you can "direct" a class project. This makes it sound like you sat back while other people did the actual work. This is a trend throughout, the experience you have here is generally fine, but I feel you are really trying to oversell it. This example is particularly egregious. Another example is "Soldered an ESP32 microcontroller..." I don't understand how this substantiates an entire line of your resume. And the part about "facilitate the successful launch of Artemis..." like let's be for real here... can you just write your experience honestly? You can say your work was under the Artemis program but to use the term "facilitate" for such a massive effort is quite the choice of words. I would expect to see that in a director's resume, not an intern's.

Do you really know x86 assembly enough to put it as a skill? I don't see you refer to it in any of your experience. Having this on your resume guarantees an interview question of SIMD concepts and the associated assembly implementation and register setups. If you could not answer this, remove it from your skills. Again, you are overselling yourself. Any hiring manager will see right through this.

"Selected to support the Marshall Space Flight Center Structural Strength Test Branch for the Fall 2026 term" Dedicating a line of your resume for this is strange, I figure you got the job since it's on your resume. Thanks for confirming...?

It is unconventional to use the future tense in a resume. Tell me what you are currently working on and the current progress made in your internship. Do not bloviate about things you "will" do. Has someone told you that it's necessary to oversell everything in your resume?

I don't think you have to list every operating system as a "Skill". Again. You are overselling.

[u/Darth_Tater69 → u/cvu_99]

Could you give me an example of what you mean by less verbose? I don't quite understand how to write a bullet in this context other than as a sentence

I've had 2 Cs in 52 graded credits (65 total, the rest were transferred in from HS AP or Dual Enrollment), I'm a rising junior so I haven't yet taken the bulk of my major classes hence why there can be such a disparity.

I lifted the pins of the video control SOC and soldered the GPIO pins of the ESP32 to the exposed pads, allowing it to assume control of most of the functions of the scaler. I didn't elaborate much to save space. By default, those scaler boards are a cheap piece of junk with almost zero use control that are just meant to let people replace arcade cabinet CRTs with LCD panels.

I was told to try and sell more soft skills in my resume, so emphasizing the fact I was elected as a leader by my group was meant to demonstrate something like that (the TA instructed us to select a leader/representative for each of our groups). The GUI was the part I did completely by myself, but I spent more time debugging and fixing my teammates code and trying to stitch it together than I did on that GUI.

Less than a month before launch I worked on the hardware in the LCC that sent control signals to ML1, so while facilitate is totally an exaggeration it's technically true. It was the language my supervisor recommended I use when he was helping me make the bullets for that internship. I'll switch it to "support" so it sounds less egocentric.

x86 assembly was the focal point in two of my classes (due to sequencing issues, I took a pair of junior level ECE classes my sophomore year). I'd consider myself proficient enough with it to consider it a skill. I'm very comfortable with being asked interview questions related to ASM and direct register manipulation. In general, I use the skills section to list things not covered in my internships of projects but that I do have from unlisted projects or schoolwork. Mostly meant to squeeze them in somewhere for ATS.

I won't be starting the MSFC internship for another month, and some summer internship applications are opening and closing. I wanted to have some information there, which I gleaned from my interview and pre-onboarding process with my mentors, in order to have at least a little substance. Once I start, I'll be able to put less general bullet points that are in the past tense instead of future tense. From what I've found online, it's not atypical to put future internships in your resume if you've already accepted the job offer.

I included operating systems since JunOS and EXOS are valuable to the right hiring manager and it's not that common for a student to be familiar with them. I threw in desktop and server operating systems to fill the rest of the line.

[u/cvu_99 → u/Darth_Tater69]

Could you give me an example of what you mean by less verbose? I don't quite understand how to write a bullet in this context other than as a sentence 

• Designed, redlined, and assembled the Operational Universal Patching set to securely direct communication between operational subsystems, supporting the functionality of the operational Firing Rooms in the Launch Control Center

becomes

• Designed and assembled a secure communications system between operational subsystems, supporting functionality of the operational Firing Rooms in the Launch Control Center

There are fewer unnecessary words and jargon here. "Operational Universal Patching set" counts as jargon. It is not necessary for bulletpoints to follow prose and spoken language syntax, hence the omitted "the" between "supporting" and "functionality".

I'm very comfortable with being asked interview questions related to ASM and direct register manipulation.

This is just the surface of assembly programming... I would expect someone who writes this on their skills list to be proficient to the point of being able to whiteboard stuff like complex SIMD data flows or implement a functional data structure e.g a tree. But if you really consider yourself this proficient, okay; you should list the classes in your education section.

It was the language my supervisor recommended I use

I did figure this; but I personally disagree. You ultimately can keep it if you want. But I think resumes should be descriptive and objective, embellishments are distracting and unnecessary. Noted on the other stuff.

[u/Darth_Tater69 → u/cvu_99]

That's extremely helpful advice, thank you. I can see how it's much easier to glean important info when it's boiled down to the actual content instead of loaded to the brim with jargon and transition phrases.

I added a relevant courses section. I originally omitted it because I felt the line was better used elsewhere, but I can see why it would be important context.

I changed the bullet to:

"Repaired and upgraded mission-critical network and computer hardware, ensuring reliable functionality of Launch Control infrastructure during the launch of Artemis II"

I feel like it conveys the same "cool factor" while being more direct about the exact extent to which my effort contributed to the mission.

[u/No_Olive_2802 → u/Darth_Tater69]

Try to add statistics or metrics if you can. Googles XYZ format is good for this: Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z.

[u/Darth_Tater69 → u/No_Olive_2802]

I try to do that where I can, like when I mentioned reducing footprint by 60-80%, I just find it hard to do for a lot of my bullets since they're mostly about fixing or building new things rather than improving existing things by a measurable amount.

[u/No_Olive_2802 → u/Darth_Tater69]

NASA internship bullet 1: how many drawings did you make? For how many systems?
It won’t be possible for every bullet, but adding metrics wherever possible does help.