Software Engineering

Software Engineer CV Guide

Land your next engineering role with a technical CV that showcases your code impact, system design skills, and shipped features.

What Makes a Great Software Engineer CV?

Technical Depth & Breadth

Engineering CVs must demonstrate both deep expertise in core technologies and broad exposure across the stack. List specific languages, frameworks, and tools you've used in production. Don't just list technologies—show how you've applied them to solve real problems at scale.

Impact & Performance

Quantify your contributions with metrics that matter: latency improvements, throughput increases, bug reduction rates, and uptime percentages. Show how your code made systems faster, more reliable, or more scalable. Performance optimizations with before/after numbers are gold.

System Design & Architecture

For mid-senior roles, demonstrate your ability to design and implement complex systems. Mention microservices architecture, distributed systems, database design, or infrastructure decisions you've made. Include scale metrics (users served, requests per second, data processed).

Code Quality & Best Practices

Highlight your commitment to clean code, testing, and DevOps practices. Mention code review contributions, test coverage improvements, CI/CD pipeline setup, or refactoring initiatives. Show you care about maintainability, not just shipping features.

Essential Engineering Skills to Highlight

Core Technologies

  • Programming Languages (Python, Java, TypeScript, Go)
  • Web Frameworks (React, Node.js, Django)
  • Databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis)
  • Cloud Platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
  • Version Control (Git, GitHub)
  • API Design (REST, GraphQL)
  • Testing (Jest, Pytest, JUnit)

Infrastructure & DevOps

  • Docker & Kubernetes
  • CI/CD (Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
  • Monitoring (Datadog, Prometheus)
  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
  • Linux/Unix Administration
  • Microservices Architecture
  • Message Queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ)

Soft Skills & Practices

  • Agile/Scrum Methodologies
  • Code Review & Mentoring
  • Technical Documentation
  • Problem Solving & Debugging
  • Cross-team Collaboration
  • System Design
  • Performance Optimization

Achievement Bullet Examples

Transform technical tasks into impactful, metric-driven achievements:

Before - Weak

"Developed backend APIs using Node.js and MongoDB."

Lists technologies but shows no impact or scale

After - Strong

"Architected and implemented RESTful APIs using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB, serving 5M+ requests per day with 99.9% uptime, reducing average response time from 800ms to 120ms through query optimization and Redis caching, supporting core e-commerce platform used by 100K+ daily active users."

Shows architecture decisions, scale, performance improvement, and business context

Before - Weak

"Wrote unit tests and fixed bugs in the codebase."

Maintenance work with no quantified impact

After - Strong

"Led code quality initiative that increased unit test coverage from 45% to 85% using Jest and React Testing Library, implementing automated E2E tests with Cypress, resulting in 60% reduction in production bugs and 40% faster feature deployment cycles."

Shows leadership, specific tools, and quantified quality improvements

Before - Weak

"Worked on microservices migration project."

Vague role, no technical details or outcomes

After - Strong

"Designed and led migration from monolithic Rails application to microservices architecture using Docker and Kubernetes on AWS EKS, decomposing 200K+ LOC into 8 independently deployable services, improving deployment frequency from bi-weekly to daily and reducing system downtime by 75%."

Shows technical depth, leadership, scale, and transformational business impact

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