The lazy answer is wrong about a third of the time

Most Israeli tech workers default to "just send English" because it covers the largest surface area: international companies, R&D centers, anything posted on LinkedIn in English, anything that touches HR systems built in California. That default is correct maybe 65% of the time. The other 35% — Israeli traditional companies, government-adjacent roles, Hebrew-first hiring managers, certain industries — you're filtering yourself out by sending English. Recruiters at Bank Hapoalim or a defense subcontractor reading an English-only CV from a candidate with a perfectly Israeli background often read it as a signal: "this person doesn't actually want to work here, they're spraying."

So the real question isn't "Hebrew or English." It's: can you read the situation well enough to pick the right one in under thirty seconds? Here's the framework I use.

The decision tree

Five inputs, in order of weight. Walk them top to bottom and stop at the first one that gives you a clear signal.

What language is the job description in? Not the company website — the actual posting. If the JD is in Hebrew, send Hebrew. If it's in English, default English. This single rule resolves about half the cases without further thought.
Who is the hiring company? Multinational R&D center (Google TLV, Meta, NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft Israel) → English. Israeli-founded global company (Wix, Monday, JFrog, Lightricks, ironSource, Wiz, Check Point) → English, almost always. Israeli traditional/financial/government (Bank Leumi, Bezeq, Rafael, IAI, Israel Electric, ministries) → Hebrew. Israeli unicorn that hires lots of locals but reports to a US board (Mobileye is the canonical case) → English primary, but have Hebrew ready.
What's the role function? Engineering, data, product, design, DevOps — English. Sales targeting Israeli market, HR, legal, finance, operations, customer success for Hebrew-speaking customers, anything regulated by Israeli law — Hebrew, even at an English-default company.
Who's the recruiter? If the recruiter contacted you in Hebrew (WhatsApp, email, LinkedIn DM), reply in Hebrew and send Hebrew. If they wrote English, send English. This is so simple people miss it.
Who actually reads the CV? If the hiring manager is based in San Francisco or London, English. If it's an Israeli VP who studied at Technion and works with a Hebrew-speaking team, the CV will get filtered through Hebrew-fluent eyes regardless of its language — pick whichever shows you better.

When Hebrew CV wins

Hebrew CVs outperform English in specific patterns Israelis under-rate:

Traditional Israeli employers. Banks (Hapoalim, Leumi, Discount, Mizrahi), insurance (Migdal, Harel, Clal), telecoms (Bezeq, Cellcom, Partner), retail (Shufersal, Rami Levy tech). Their HRIS systems are Hebrew-first and their internal review is in Hebrew. An English CV gets translated by a junior HR person — badly — before reaching the manager.
Defense and government. Rafael, IAI, Elbit on the security-cleared side, plus any role touching the Ministry of Defense, Shin Bet tech, IDF civilian positions. They expect Hebrew. English signals "I'm here for a few years before relocating."
Israeli-market sales and customer-facing roles at any company, including the global ones. A Wix Account Manager for Israeli SMBs gets a Hebrew CV; a Wix infrastructure engineer gets English.
Recruiters who write you in Hebrew first. They've already told you the language of the conversation. Match it.
Junior or career-pivot candidates with a strongly Israeli background. Army unit, local degree, Hebrew-first volunteer work — Hebrew tells that story more naturally and avoids the awkwardness of translating "מפקד צוות בחיל הקשר" into something an American would parse.

When English CV wins

Anything with "R&D" in the team name at a multinational. The CV will be uploaded to Greenhouse or Workday and read by a global rubric.
Israeli-founded global tech — Mobileye, Wiz, Check Point, JFrog, Lightricks, Monday, Wix engineering, ironSource. Hebrew CVs at these companies get a polite eyebrow-raise and re-routed for translation, costing you a day in a fast-moving pipeline.
Anything where the next interviewer might be remote. If round two could be a Zoom with someone in Austin, your CV needs to read clean to them on round one.
Senior roles you'd consider relocating for. Signal that you can operate in English without making it explicit.
Technical roles, period, at >50-person tech companies. The vocabulary is English anyway — Kubernetes, observability, embeddings, ARR, SLOs — and forcing it into Hebrew transliteration looks worse than just writing English.

The "submit both" trick — works less often than you think

Some candidates attach two PDFs — Hebrew and English — to hedge. This works in exactly one scenario: an Israeli company where the JD didn't specify and you genuinely don't know who's reading. In that case, name them clearly (Cohen_Yael_CV_EN.pdf and Cohen_Yael_CV_HE.pdf) and mention both in the email body in one line.

It backfires when:

The ATS is configured to take the first attachment only — your Hebrew version wins by alphabetical accident.
The recruiter reads it as indecisive. Senior recruiters at top-tier R&D centers have told me this directly. Pick a lane.
The two versions have inconsistencies (different dates, missing roles in one). Maintaining two CVs in sync is real work — see below.

Hebrew CV pitfalls Israelis still underestimate

Even native Hebrew writers ship CVs with these problems weekly:

Mixed-direction text breaks PDF rendering. An English company name inside a Hebrew bullet — "ניהלתי צוות ב-AWS עם 12 מפתחים" — renders correctly in Word but flips in some PDF viewers, especially when emailed and re-opened on a Mac. Always export from Word with "Embed fonts" on, then open the PDF on a different machine before sending.
Transliterated job titles look amateur. "סי-טי-או" or "פרודקט מנג'ר" should just be CTO or Product Manager, written in Latin script inside the Hebrew sentence. Hebrew CVs are bilingual by necessity — embrace it.
Phone numbers. +972-50-... for English CVs, 050-... for Hebrew CVs. Mixing them up signals carelessness.
Date formats. Hebrew CV: 2023-2025 or שנים. English CV: Jan 2023 - Mar 2025. Don't write "ינואר 2023" on an English CV because Word auto-translated.
Army service section. On Hebrew CVs, list the unit and role plainly. On English CVs, translate the function — "Team Lead, Signal Corps" — not the literal Hebrew name. American readers don't know what 8200 means; they do know "intelligence unit, technical role."

The right answer is to maintain two CVs that stay in lockstep, primary in the language of your dominant target market, and to know which to send within thirty seconds of opening the JD. Everything else is procrastination dressed as strategy.

Concrete recommendation by profile

R&D engineer targeting global tech (Mobileye, Wiz, Google TLV, Meta): English primary, Hebrew kept updated quarterly for the occasional local opportunity.
Product manager mixing local and global roles: Both, equal effort. The split is real.
Sales, marketing, customer success focused on Israeli market: Hebrew primary, English version for the rare global-team interview.
Career-changer or junior: Hebrew primary unless you're specifically targeting English-only R&D centers — your story reads better in your stronger language.
Defense, government, traditional finance: Hebrew, full stop. Don't even maintain English unless you're planning to leave the sector.

Use the resume builder to keep both versions structurally identical so a recruiter who sees one and asks for the other doesn't get a different person back. And when a specific JD lands, run it through adapt-resume to tune the right-language version to that role's keywords — don't translate-and-pray.