Software Engineer resume example
A software engineer resume gets read for about seven seconds. What survives that read: a two-line summary with a number in it, bullets that start with a result, and the skills the posting asked for. Below is a complete example you can adapt, and the rough notes it was generated from.
Summary
Backend engineer with 6 years building high-traffic APIs in Go and Python. Cut p99 latency by 40% on a payments service handling 2M requests a day and led the move from a monolith to 12 services without downtime.
Experience bullets that work
- Reduced p99 API latency from 480 ms to 290 ms by adding a read-through cache and rewriting 3 hot queries.
- Led migration of a monolith to 12 services over 9 months with zero customer-facing downtime.
- Cut cloud spend by $18k/year by right-sizing Kubernetes workloads and removing idle environments.
- Mentored 4 junior engineers; two were promoted within a year.
- Introduced contract tests that dropped production incidents from integration bugs by 60%.
Key skills for a software engineer
- Go
- Python
- PostgreSQL
- Kubernetes
- AWS
- CI/CD
- System design
- Code review
Common mistakes
- Listing every technology you ever touched instead of the ones the posting asks for.
- Describing tasks ("worked on the API") instead of results with numbers.
- Putting side projects above paid experience when you have 3+ years of work.
From rough notes to a finished resume
This is all CV Forge needs — no template to fill in, no formatting:
Alex Kim alex@example.com Acme Pay, Senior Backend Engineer, 2021-now - payments API 2M req/day, p99 480ms -> 290ms with cache + query rewrite - monolith to 12 services, no downtime - saved 18k/yr cloud ShopLine, Software Engineer, 2018-2021 - order service in Go - contract tests, fewer incidents BSc Computer Science 2018 Go, Python, PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, AWSGenerate this resume free — then swap in your notes
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Check it against the job you want
Recruiters filter software engineer resumes by the words in the posting. Paste your resume and the job ad into the free ATS Match Score to see which of them you are missing, score your resume free (0-100, with every fix listed), or start from the software engineer resume keywords list. Applying now? Adapt the software engineer cover letter example.