German engineering CVs often fail not because the candidate lacks depth, but because the document leads with soft skills or a chronological dump of every tool ever touched. Hiring partners in Mittelstand firms and larger industrials tend to look for role clarity, measurable ownership, and standards or methods named in plain language.
Start with a short professional profile that states your discipline, seniority, and the environments you know — plant floor, design office, site supervision, lab. Then let experience bullets carry decisions: scrap reduced after an FMEA change, a tolerance stack-up you owned, a commissioning delay you recovered. Tools belong as support, not as the headline.
If you are applying across Länder, keep one master CV and adjust the first half-page for sector language. A food-plant process role and an automotive quality role may share your history, but they do not share the same first keywords.