Resume template · Updated October 2026
Software engineer resume template
Short answer
Pick FAANGPath. It is a minimal centred layout that prints your languages and tools in labelled rows before the first job, which is how most engineering screeners read. The fictional sample is a mid-level engineer five years out of school, at a B2B invoicing company: a design doc she wrote, a feature she built and still supports on call, and a search latency fix with before and after numbers.
Download the software engineer sample
Nadia is a fictional software engineer. Replace every detail with your own before you send it.
The files are made in your browser by Resumity's own exporters, from this sample. The builder opens it as your own resume: click any line to replace it. Free plan, no watermark.
Why FAANGPath suits a software engineer resume
FAANGPath was drawn for software engineers: summary, then a skills block of labelled rows with a dot after each label, then work experience. A reader checking whether you match the stack in the posting finds the answer before reaching your job titles, and the black and grey page carries nothing that competes with the bullets.
Second choice: Meridian. Meridian has the same section order with grey rules running beside each heading and a colon after skill labels; choose it if you prefer that look or the editor default.
What goes in each section, in FAANGPath's order
FAANGPath prints its sections in a fixed order, the same in the PDF and the Word file. Here is that order for this sample, and what to put in each section.
- Professional Summary. Two sentences: your level, the kind of product, and the part of the stack you own. "Five years on B2B SaaS, leaning backend" tells a hiring manager which team to route you to. Leave out "passionate" and "team player"; the bullets prove those or they do not.
- Skills. Technical for languages, frameworks and concepts such as system design; Tools for databases, cloud services, CI and observability; a short Soft Skills row for review and mentoring work. Only list what you could be quizzed on in a technical screen tomorrow.
- Work Experience. Each bullet should show scope and a result: what you designed or shipped, how big it is, what changed. Mix the kinds of evidence inside a role: one feature, one performance or reliability fix, one piece of team work such as reviews, mentoring or an incident review.
- Education. Degree, school and year. After a few years in industry this is a single line; drop GPA and coursework unless you graduated in the last two years.
The sample resume as text
The same content as the files above, so you can copy a line or compare it with your own.
Nadia Kowalski
Software Engineer
Seattle, WA | nadia.kowalski@example.com | (206) 555-0139 | github.com/sample-nadia-kowalski | linkedin.com/in/sample-nadia-kowalski
Software engineer with five years on B2B SaaS products, leaning backend. Writes the design doc, builds across the API and the UI, and joins the on-call rotation for each service shipped.
Experience
Software Engineer II, Quillstone Software, Seattle, WA (03/2023 to Present)
- Wrote the design doc for recurring invoices and built it across the API, a scheduler and the React settings screen; customers now send about 40,000 scheduled invoices a month.
- Cut p95 latency for invoice search from 1.8 s to 400 ms with a PostgreSQL trigram index and keyset pagination.
- Serve on the payments on-call rotation; wrote runbooks for the five noisiest alerts and led two incident reviews.
- Review around 15 pull requests a week and mentored two interns through their first production deploys.
Software Engineer, Brackenridge Labs, Portland, OR (07/2021 to 02/2023)
- Built a TypeScript service that ingests carrier tracking events and normalizes them for the customer shipment dashboard.
- Replaced a nightly batch import with an SQS-driven worker, so new shipments appear in minutes instead of the next morning.
- Added contract tests between the dashboard and three backend services, catching breaking API changes before merge.
Education
BS, Computer Science, Cascade Ridge University (06/2021)
Skills
TypeScript, Python, SQL, React, REST API design, System design, PostgreSQL, AWS (Lambda, SQS, RDS), Docker, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Design reviews, Mentoring, Incident reviews
How to make the sample yours
Describe your product in a few words
The sample says "B2B invoicing platform". Replace it with what your employer sells and who uses it, so a reader outside your company can picture the system and its scale.
Use your real before-and-after numbers
The search bullet goes from 1.8 seconds to 400 milliseconds. Pull your own figures from dashboards or the pull request description. If you never measured, describe the change and its effect in words rather than inventing a number.
Reorder the Technical row for each posting
Put the languages the job asks for first. If it wants Go and you have written a little, list it only if you could talk through code you wrote in it.
Keep one on-call or incident line
Teams that run their own services want to know you have carried a pager. Swap the runbook bullet for your own rotation, or for a production bug you traced and fixed.
Show that you make other engineers better
Code review volume, mentoring interns, onboarding docs: keep one such bullet. Above mid-level it weighs as much as the features.
Keywords to keep where they are true
Terms this kind of resume is usually searched for. Use the posting's exact wording, and only for work you have done.
- software engineering
- system design
- design documents
- REST APIs
- TypeScript
- Python
- PostgreSQL
- AWS
- CI/CD
- code review
- on-call
- incident review
- integration testing
- distributed systems
Mistakes to avoid
- A skills row holding every language you touched in a course. Screeners ask about anything listed.
- Bullets that only name a technology ("Worked with SQS") without saying what you built with it.
- Internal project code names that nobody outside the company can decode.
- Leaving out scale. Requests, customers, data size or team size tell a reader the level of the work.
How the sample PDF reads in text extractors
We exported this sample with Resumity's PDF exporter in Chrome on 2026-10-29 and read the file back with three open-source text extractors. This shows whether software that turns a PDF into text can recover it; it is not a test of any commercial applicant tracking system. How we test templates.
| Extractor | Name, email, phone | Headings | Bullets intact |
|---|---|---|---|
| pdf.js 4.10.38 | All found | 4 of 4 | 7 of 7 |
| pdftotext (Xpdf) 4.00 | All found | 4 of 4 | 7 of 7 |
| pypdf 6.13.0 | All found | 4 of 4 | 7 of 7 |
Frequently asked questions
How long should a software engineer resume be?
One page up to roughly eight years of experience. Past that, a second page is fine if it holds recent, relevant work rather than old jobs described in detail.
Should I include side projects if I already have an engineering job?
Only if they show something your job does not, such as a language the posting wants or an open-source library people use. Otherwise the space is better spent on your current role.
Does a software engineer need a summary at all?
It is optional, but two plain sentences help a recruiter route you: level, product area and the part of the stack you work in. FAANGPath prints it above the skills block.
How do I show impact if I cannot share company numbers?
Use relative changes ("cut p95 latency by about three quarters"), ranges, or the size of the system instead of revenue. Never publish figures your employer treats as confidential.
Should I write frontend and backend work in separate sections?
No. Keep one list of bullets per job and let each bullet name the layer it touched. A generalist profile reads better as features shipped than as two half-lists.
Will applicant tracking systems read this FAANGPath PDF?
The sample PDF read back with its contact details, all 4 section headings and all 7 bullets intact in three open-source text extractors (pdf.js, pdftotext and pypdf). Commercial systems such as Workday, Greenhouse or Taleo were not tested, and each employer configures its own.
Guides and templates for this resume
More in resume templates by job title.