Resume for a software engineer
A hiring manager skims for what you shipped and whether it matches this team. The title line should name the kind of engineer the posting wants. The bullets should name the system, what you changed, and the result you can defend.
Put this near the top
The first lines decide whether the rest gets read.
- A title that matches the posting: backend, iOS, data, or full-stack. "Software engineer" alone is weaker than the specialty they wrote.
- Years of relevant work, and the kind of system: payments, mobile checkout, internal tools, data pipelines.
- A short skills line of what you use on the job now. If the posting names a language or cloud, and you use it, put that here. Do not add a tool you opened once.
Write the experience this way
Three to five bullets per recent role is enough. Older roles can be shorter.
- Start from the problem, then what you changed, then the outcome. Latency, incidents, revenue, or the number of users is useful when you know the number. If you do not know it, describe the change in the system instead of inventing a metric.
- Name what you owned. "Worked on the API" does not say whether you designed it, reviewed it, or fixed one bug.
- A project is worth a section when you have little job history, and only if you can explain the constraint and what you built. Link the code if you would let a stranger read it.
Leave this off
These lines make a technical resume look padded.
- A skills grid of every language, framework, and editor you have touched.
- An objective that says you are seeking a challenging role.
- Coursework from years ago, unless you are a new graduate and the course is the proof you have.
- A photo, age, or marital status. They are not part of the engineering case.
The work history stays in one career profile. Paste a posting and Profica rewrites the title, the leading bullets, and the emphasis for that job. How resume tailoring works.
Questions
Should I list every language I know?
List the ones you can work in without a ramp-up, and put the posting's stack first if it is true. A long list of languages at the same rank reads as unfamiliarity with all of them.
What if I do not have a metric?
Say what changed in the system: the failure mode you removed, the review step you added, the migration you finished. A made-up percentage is worse than a concrete change.
Do I need a different resume for every engineering job?
The history stays the same. The title, the skills line, and which bullets lead should change to match the posting. Profica keeps one career profile and writes that version per job.