Universal-filtered multi-carrier (UFMC) is a novel multi-carrier modulation technique for 5G wireless communication, which is suitable for short packet and low latency transmissions. In addition, UFMC has a lower sensitivity to synchronization errors compared with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), however synchronization is still an important problem for UFMC-based systems. In this paper, a new preamble structure based on Zadoff Chu (ZC) sequence is devised first for UFMC based systems. Then, an efficient carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation scheme based on the preamble is proposed. The scheme is primarily divided into two steps. To begin with, based on Maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm, a coarse carrier frequency offset estimation approach is expounded and the searching step of this approach is discussed for a relatively simple calculation. Next, according to the preamble structure, compensated preamble is correlated for fine residual CFO estimation. Through numerous simulations, it is verified that the scheme has a large estimation range and accurate CFO estimation in multipath fading channels.