A software engineer resume is read twice: once by an applicant tracking system scanning for stack keywords, and once by an engineer skimming for scope and impact. This example shows how to satisfy both in one page — a tight summary, quantified achievement bullets, and a skills block that mirrors the job description without keyword stuffing.
Recommended template: ATS Professional or Modern Sidebar
Backend engineer with 5 years building high-traffic Node.js and Go services. Cut median API latency 240ms to 70ms across a platform serving 3M monthly users, and led the migration of 40+ endpoints to a typed GraphQL gateway.
Hiring managers scan for three things in the first ten seconds: the stack you actually shipped with, the scale you operated at, and whether you owned outcomes or just tickets. Everything else is supporting evidence.
Put your strongest technical achievement in the summary, not buried in the third bullet of your second job. If your best work is open source or a side project, give it a real section rather than a link at the bottom.
For engineers with two or more years of experience, lead with work history. Students and career switchers should lead with projects, then education, then a short work section — the projects are the evidence.
The most damaging mistake is listing responsibilities instead of results. 'Responsible for maintaining the API' tells a reader nothing; 'cut API error rate from 2.1% to 0.3% by adding request validation' tells them everything.
The second is a skills section with thirty items rated with progress bars. Rated bars are unverifiable and applicant tracking systems cannot read them. List the technologies plainly and let the experience bullets prove depth.