Hiring managers for engineering roles read CVs looking for two things: can this person build things that work, and can they work well in a team? Your CV should show your technical depth through concrete projects and measurable impact — not just a long list of languages.
Recommended structure
- 1Header with GitHub and portfolio links.
- 2Short summary: level, specialism, main stack.
- 3Technical skills grouped by category.
- 4Experience with impact-focused bullets.
- 5Projects (essential for juniors; optional for seniors).
- 6Education and certifications.
Write a grouped tech stack
Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, SQL
Frontend: React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS
Backend: Node.js, Express, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Redis
Cloud & DevOps: AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda), Docker, GitHub Actions, Terraform
Practices: REST & GraphQL APIs, unit/integration testing, code review, Agile
Only list technologies you can discuss confidently in a technical interview.
Experience bullets that show impact
Impact-focused
- Rebuilt the checkout flow in React and TypeScript, reducing page load time by 45% and increasing conversion by 8%.
- Designed a Node.js microservice processing 2M events per day with 99.95% uptime.
- Introduced automated integration tests that cut production bugs by roughly a third over two quarters.
Task-focused
- Worked on the frontend.
- Wrote backend code.
- Did testing.
Mention scale (users, requests, data volume), performance, reliability, cost or business outcomes.
Projects for junior developers
- Choose two to four projects that solve real problems and are deployed or on GitHub with a clear README.
- For each: one line on what it does, the stack, and a result (users, stars, performance).
- Open-source contributions and hackathon wins are strong signals.
Put this into practice
Build an ATS-friendly CV with live preview and free PDF download.
Software engineer profile examples
Computer Science graduate with two internships building React and Node.js features in production. Created an open-source budgeting app with 300+ GitHub stars. Seeking a junior full-stack role in a product team.
Senior backend engineer with 8 years building distributed systems in Go and Java. Led the redesign of an order platform to event-driven microservices, supporting 5x traffic growth while reducing infrastructure costs by 30%.
How to show seniority
- Scope: systems you owned end to end and the number of users or requests they served.
- Technical leadership: design reviews, architecture decisions, migrations you led.
- People impact: engineers mentored, hiring panels, onboarding guides you wrote.
- Reliability: on-call ownership, incident response, SLO improvements.
- Business outcomes: revenue, conversion, cost savings or time-to-market improvements.
Keywords that recruiters search for
Recruiters typically search by language (Python, Java, TypeScript, Go, C#), framework (React, Angular, Spring, .NET, Django), cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), and practices (microservices, CI/CD, Kubernetes, testing). Use the exact names from the advert and include versions only when they matter.
Common mistakes
- Listing 30+ technologies without context.
- Skill bars ("JavaScript 85%") — meaningless to recruiters.
- Broken GitHub links or empty repositories.
- Leaving out soft skills like code review, mentoring and cross-team communication.
Use the software engineer CV template to get a head start, and check our remote job CV tips if you are applying to distributed teams.
Frequently asked questions
Should a software engineer CV be one page?+
One page for juniors and many mid-level engineers; two pages for senior and staff engineers with substantial experience.
Do I need a portfolio?+
For juniors and frontend developers, a portfolio or active GitHub is very helpful. Senior engineers can rely more on work experience.
Related CV examples
BuildCVFast Editorial Team
This guide is written and reviewed by the BuildCVFast editorial team using current hiring practices, published employer guidance and official government sources where relevant. We update our guides regularly. Read our editorial policy or send us a correction.