One of the nicest features of Pandoc is its ability to combine structured data (like YAML) with a LaTeX template to generate professional-looking PDFs. This makes it especially useful for creating a curriculum vitae (CV), where you may want to keep your personal information separate from the style. That way, updating your CV is as simple as editing a .yaml file rather than touching your LaTeX template every time.

In this article, I’ll explain how to set up such a system: a .yaml file for your personal info, a .tex file for the design of your CV, and Pandoc with pdflatex to compile everything into a polished PDF.

Why use Pandoc + LaTeX for a CV?

  • Separation of content and style: Your data (education, work experience, skills) lives in a simple YAML file, while the look of the CV is controlled in a LaTeX template.
  • Easy updates: Update your details in the YAML and regenerate the PDF without worrying about formatting.
  • Consistency: You can maintain multiple CV styles (academic, industry, one-page résumé) without duplicating content.
  • Automation: Generate CVs with a single command in the terminal.

Step 1. Install the required tools

You’ll need:

Check your setup by running:

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pandoc --version
pdflatex --version

Step 2. Create your YAML file

Let’s call it cv.yaml. This file will store your personal information and CV sections. For example:

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name: "Jane Doe"
email: "jane.doe@example.com"
phone: "+34 600 123 456"
linkedin: "linkedin.com/in/janedoe"

education:
  - degree: "M.Sc. in Computer Science"
    institution: "University of Barcelona"
    year: "2023"
  - degree: "B.Sc. in Mathematics"
    institution: "Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona"
    year: "2021"

experience:
  - role: "Software Engineer"
    company: "TechCorp"
    years: "2023–present"
    details:
      - "Backend development in Python and Go"
      - "Designed and maintained CI/CD pipelines"
  - role: "Research Assistant"
    company: "Barcelona Supercomputing Center"
    years: "2022–2023"
    details:
      - "Worked on sparse tensor optimizations for RISC-V"

This structured format makes it very easy to maintain.

Step 3. Create your LaTeX CV template

Now let’s create a file cv.tex that defines the style of your CV. Pandoc treats this as a template, where variables from the YAML will be injected.

A minimal example could look like this:

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\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{margin=2cm}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
    {\Huge \textbf{$name$}} \\[0.5em]
    \href{mailto:$email$}{$email$} | $phone$ | \href{https://$linkedin$}{$linkedin$}
\end{center}

\vspace{1em}

\section*{Education}
$for(education)$
\textbf{$education.degree$}, $education.institution$ \hfill $education.year$ \\
$endfor$

\section*{Experience}
$for(experience)$
\textbf{$experience.role$} --- $experience.company$ \hfill $experience.years$ \\
\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=*]
$for(experience.details)$
    \item $experience.details$
$endfor$
\end{itemize}
$endfor$

\end{document}

Here, the $variables$ will be replaced by the contents of your YAML file. Loops like $for(experience)$ … $endfor$ let you repeat blocks for each item in a list.

Step 4. Generate your PDF

With everything set up, you can generate your CV PDF with:

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pandoc cv.yaml \
    --template=cv.tex \
    -o cv.pdf \
    --pdf-engine=pdflatex

This command tells Pandoc to:

  1. Load the data from cv.yaml.
  2. Use cv.tex as the template.
  3. Produce a PDF with pdflatex.

Step 5. Customize the style

The real power of this setup comes from LaTeX. You can:

  • Add color with xcolor
  • Use modern fonts with fontspec (if you use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX)
  • Adjust layout with parskip, titlesec, or custom commands
  • Even create multiple templates (cv-academic.tex, cv-industry.tex) while keeping a single cv.yaml

Wrapping up

Using Pandoc + LaTeX templates + YAML data gives you a maintainable, automated way to build CVs. Instead of copy-pasting between Word files, you just update your structured YAML and rebuild.

This approach is not only cleaner and more flexible but also scales if you want to create multiple styles of CVs for different purposes.