Software engineers play a crucial role in various elements of software development. The programs that you run on your computer? The many apps installed on your phone? Some of the tech inside smartwatches? At some point, a software engineer was needed to finish the product. Even the coding of this website required a software engineer to make.
With technology continuously on the rise, so is the demand for software engineers. The need for them hasn’t declined in a long time. Developers have a bright future in the job market; employment in this field is projected to boost 22% over the next decade.
Because technology is ever-changing, recruiters want to see a willingness to learn and adapt. However, they also want to see your experience with various software programs or skills like HTML/CSS, Python, Java, and more. If you’re transitioning to or from a role like data analytics, many of the skills you learned or used will be useful in your new job.
Continue reading to view examples of effectively written software engineer resumes that will get you your next job.
Software engineers with a few years of experience will want to list a good amount of relevant skills, and explain their application in their experience. This sample provides a list of skills needed for the job. It also talks about how those skills were used to deliver effective results. In your resume, talk about what skills/programs you’ve used and how you benefited the company from using them.
Along with mentioning the job title at the top, this sample lists the job title a few times throughout the whole resume. It also lists certain key terms that are common for this profession. In your resume, try to use keywords that are relevant to the position. This will help your resume pass the ATS during the application process.
If you’re a recent college graduate or completed a Bootcamp, this is the resume template for you. The key here is for you to sell yourself with the skills you’ve learned, projects you’ve completed, and software tools you’ve used. Internship experience, if any, will be useful to highlight as well. This sample lists many activities, projects, and classes that are relevant to the position, and communicate effective use of the knowledge they have.
We understand that you may not have much experience right out of college. That’s why you should list relevant activities you’ve done while in school. This sample does so by listing important courses, projects completed and explaining the different software used.
This sample communicates strong relevant verbs to highlight their experience. Use of words like “developed”, “designed”, and “implemented” all help to show usage of the skills they have. Use action verbs like these in your resume to show you can apply the knowledge you have to real situations.
It takes more than being skilled in different software to excel as a senior software engineer. You also need to convey that you can effectively lead a team that delivers positive results. This sample demonstrates the success they’ve had bringing individual success and managing a team that also succeeds.
Recruiters love to see that your success led to achievement and promotion. If you’ve been promoted, describe that promotion, listing timelines and achievements leading up to it. An example found in this sample is “promoted within 18 months due to strong performance and organizational impact”.
While it is key to list the skills you’re proficient at, you should list which skills you excel at. Did you achieve high marks for something complex? Were you in charge of a project that led to large profits? Elaborate on the skills used to accomplish these feats in your resume.
Software testing is different from the other similar job titles listed. Instead of building software, you’re testing it. This sample explains how they did various quality assurance tasks to find flaws and boost performance. Add your achievements in your experience to show that you know what to specifically look for when testing software.
Because you’ll be testing numerous software to improve results, you need to provide metrics of your results. This sample does this by numerically explaining how much productivity and efficiency were increased.
Experience leading a team is necessary for this role. It’s also great for when you desire to level up within a company. This sample lists how effective team leadership led to satisfactory results. If you’re chasing a promotion, list some of your project management experience throughout your resume.
If you're a software engineer with a few years of experience under your belt, use a template like this one. It's simple, effective at highlighting our work experience, and minimizes the emphasis on the education section (the dates are omitted which is good to prevent ageism, especially if you graduated more than 10 years ago).
The first rule about including a resume summary is that it does not repeat accomplishments mentioned elsewhere on the resume. This resume stresses new software engineering and leadership skills right at the top of the resume, and includes an award too. If you include a summary, try to include a mix of both technical accomplishments (e.g. projects you developed or led), as well as career-related accomplishments (e.g. being promoted).
Each bullet point starts with an action verb that stresses the skills relevant to the role. For example, action verbs like "Led", "Spearheaded", or "Launched" emphasize leadership.
Software developers should always stress their technical programming and software development skills. They should do that throughout their work experience and skills section, and if you don't have enough work experience, use a projects section like this resume does.
It's becoming increasingly standard for software developers to include one or two projects which stress their software development experience, outside their professional experience. This is what's been done in this template. Only do this, however, if you don't have enough work experience or your work experience doesn't emphasize enough technical skills (or doesn't emphasize technical skills relevant to the actual job you're applying to).
Recruiters look for evidence of professional growth, and promotions are a great way to show recruiters that.
Software developers are assigned to do tasks similar to a software engineer. The difference is that a developer will be more focused on a specific project versus the broad work done by an engineer. For this, your resume needs to have achievements and results from a particular project.
When working on a particular project, stating the results is key. Examples listed in the sample include “resolved”, “documented”, and “customized”. All of these are action verbs that will help recruiters see that you played a major role in the improvements of a project.
Recruiters like to see tasks that solely pertain to software development. This sample has experience fully relevant to the position without much mention of skills for other fields.
To get your resume noticed, it needs to list skills that make you look like you’d be successful in the role. It’s equally important to talk about how you used these skills to succeed.
If you want your resume to be seen, thoroughly read through the job description. Find keywords and hard skills in the description that you can use in your resume. Doing so will get your resume past ATS and in the hands of hiring managers. Here is a list of skills and keywords we’ve analyzed from job descriptions; use these to make your resume powerful.
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Software Engineer job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
Software engineering is an analytics-heavy profession. It’s going to involve many percentages, projects, and the use of different software. Hard skills are necessary to excel in this job. But software engineers need to be proficient at teamwork or team management. To succeed in a company project, you’ll need to gather all of the info necessary to get the job done.
Recruiters want to see your resume communicate that you can use relevant skills for projects, and for helping others reach a common goal.
To make your resume stand out against the competition, follow our suggestions:
The use of weak action verbs will hurt the overall strength of your resume. You don’t want to use generic verbs. You want to use ones that are complementary to the software skills you’ve used.
Try not to overuse one action verb; variety helps keep your resume unique.
If you’re not sure which action verbs to use, here’s a list of action verbs that are useful for software engineers.
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become a Software Engineer, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on a Software Engineer resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Software Engineer resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
You should use bullet points to describe your achievements in your Software Engineer resume. Here are sample bullet points to help you get started:
Designed and implemented 50+ E2E tests using Selenium & Protractor, simulating each user group's actions
Analyzed impact and effectiveness of in-app UI changes on customer retention; identified features of customer behavior and recommended additional menu modifications [R, MySQL, Chart JS]
Developed web scraping program in Python to help the firm download public data, including over 10,000 company descriptions and stock quotes, enriching internal data and increasing research efficiency by over 50%
Designed and implemented an automated system for processing employee timesheets, eliminating the need for manual handwritten timesheets and resulted in a 10/hr per week time saving
Led code review sessions with peers to present and analyze system designs; recommendations reduced defect creation rate by 35%
For more sample bullet points and details on how to write effective bullet points, see our articles on resume bullet points, how to quantify your resume and resume accomplishments.
