Technology · Mid-level
Software engineering resumes fail for a predictable reason: they list technologies instead of outcomes. Recruiters screening hundreds of applications look for evidence you shipped things that mattered — latency cut, revenue unblocked, incidents prevented — with the stack as supporting detail, not the headline.
The example below shows the structure that survives both the ATS keyword filter and the six-second human scan: a title-matched header, a summary that leads with scope, and bullets that follow the "did X, measured by Y, using Z" pattern.
Software Engineer with 5 years building high-traffic backend services in Python and Go. Led the migration of a monolith serving 2M daily users to event-driven microservices, cutting p95 latency 43% and paging incidents by two-thirds. Comfortable owning systems end-to-end, from design review to on-call.
ATS filters match literal strings. If the posting says "Amazon Web Services", write that alongside "AWS" at least once. Put the matched stack in your top-third: summary or first role.
Refactors and migrations have numbers too: build minutes saved, incident count before/after, services consolidated. A bullet without a number reads as a duty, not an achievement.
Two-column layouts and skill graphics scramble in most ATS parsers. Standard headings ("Work Experience", "Skills", "Education") parse reliably; clever ones ("My Journey") often don’t.
One page under ~8 years of experience, two pages maximum after that. Recruiters skim; length beyond two pages dilutes your strongest signal.
No — list what you could interview on today, weighted toward the target role’s stack. A 40-item skills cloud reads as noise and drags keyword relevance down.
Only if they demonstrate something your work experience doesn’t — real users, an unfamiliar stack, or open-source maintenance. One or two strong entries beat a list of tutorials.
Start from this structure in the free editor, then run the ATS check to verify it parses.