# [Full Name]: Software Engineer Resume

> Resume template for software engineers at any level, from new graduate
> to staff. Based on common recruiting practice: a scannable header, a
> short summary, grouped skills, and experience written as impact bullets
> (action + result with numbers). Replace every `[bracketed]` value and
> every line marked *Example*, then delete the sections that do not apply
> and the tailoring notes at the end before you send it.

<!--
Guidance: How to use this template
- Keep a long "master" copy of this file with every role, project and
  bullet you have ever written. Copy it and cut down for each application.
- Recruiters skim for 10-30 seconds. Put the strongest evidence in the
  top third of page one: summary, most recent role, top skills.
- Every bullet should answer "what did you do, how, and what changed?".
  If you cannot attach a number, attach a concrete outcome.
- Export to PDF for sending. Keep the Markdown as the source of truth.
-->

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Version | [2026-10 Backend roles] |
| Target role | [Senior Backend Engineer] |
| Target company / job ID | [Company name, JOB-12345] |
| Length target | [1 page (< 7 years) / 2 pages (7+ years)] |
| Last updated | YYYY-MM-DD |

## Header

<!-- Guidance: Name, title line and contact details only. No photo, date of birth, marital status or full street address unless the target country expects them. Links must be live and clickable in the PDF. -->

**[Full Name]**
[Senior Software Engineer, Backend and Distributed Systems]

[City, Country] (open to [remote / relocation]) · [email@example.com] · [+00 000 000 000]
[github.com/username] · [linkedin.com/in/username] · [yourdomain.dev]

## Summary

<!-- Guidance: Two to four lines. Years of experience, domain, strongest technical depth, and one headline achievement. Avoid adjectives that anyone could claim ("passionate", "hard-working"). Rewrite it for every application so it mirrors the job description. -->

[Software engineer with N years building [type of systems] in
[languages]. Strongest in [area]. Recently [headline achievement with a
number]. Looking for [scope of next role].]

*Example:* Backend engineer with 8 years building high-traffic payment
and ledger services in Go and Java. Strongest in distributed data
consistency and incident-free migrations. Recently led the move of
1.2 billion ledger rows to a sharded PostgreSQL cluster with zero
downtime. Looking for a senior or staff role owning core platform
services.

## Skills

<!-- Guidance: Group skills so a reader finds them in one glance. List only what you could discuss confidently in an interview. Order each group by strength, not alphabetically. Drop skill ratings, bars and percentages; they mean nothing to readers or parsers. -->

| Group | Skills |
|---|---|
| Languages | [Go, Java, TypeScript, Python, SQL] |
| Backend and APIs | [gRPC, REST, GraphQL, Kafka, Redis] |
| Data | [PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, BigQuery] |
| Cloud and infrastructure | [AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS), Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker] |
| Practices | [TDD, code review, on-call, incident command, design docs] |
| Frontend (if relevant) | [React, Next.js] |

## Experience

<!-- Guidance: Reverse chronological order. For each role: one line of context (what the company or team does, scale), then 3-6 impact bullets. Start each bullet with a strong verb in the past tense (present tense for the current role is also fine, but be consistent). Formula: action + how + result. Quantify with latency, throughput, cost, revenue, error rate, time saved, users or team size. Older roles (10+ years) get one or two bullets or a single "Earlier experience" line. -->

### [Job title] · [Company] · [City or Remote]

*[Mon YYYY] to [Present]* · [One line of context: product, scale, team size, stack.]

- [Action verb] [what you built or changed] using [technology or method], [result with a number].
- [Action verb] [what you built or changed] using [technology or method], [result with a number].
- [Led / mentored / owned] [people or process outcome].

*Example:* **Senior Software Engineer · Northwind Payments · Remote**
*Mar 2022 to Present* · Ledger and payouts platform, 40 million
transactions per day, team of 7, Go and PostgreSQL on AWS.

- *Example:* Designed and led the migration of the ledger to a sharded
  PostgreSQL cluster (16 shards), cutting p99 write latency from 180 ms
  to 35 ms with zero customer-visible downtime.
- *Example:* Built an idempotency layer for the payouts API that
  eliminated duplicate transfers (from 14 per month to 0) and closed a
  long-standing audit finding.
- *Example:* Reduced monthly AWS spend for the team by 31% (USD 22,000)
  by right-sizing RDS instances and moving batch jobs to Spot.
- *Example:* Introduced design-doc reviews and an on-call runbook;
  mean time to recovery fell from 74 to 21 minutes over two quarters.
- *Example:* Mentored three engineers, two of whom were promoted within
  18 months.

### [Job title] · [Company] · [City]

*[Mon YYYY] to [Mon YYYY]* · [Context line.]

- [Action + how + result.]
- [Action + how + result.]
- [Action + how + result.]

*Example:* **Software Engineer · Bluebird Logistics · Berlin**
*Jul 2018 to Feb 2022* · Route-planning SaaS for 900 fleet operators,
Java and Kafka.

- *Example:* Rewrote the route-optimisation worker as a streaming
  service on Kafka, raising throughput from 2,000 to 15,000 jobs per
  minute.
- *Example:* Added contract tests between 11 services, reducing
  integration-related production incidents by 60% year over year.

### Earlier experience

[Job title, Company, YYYY to YYYY; Job title, Company, YYYY to YYYY.]

## Projects

<!-- Guidance: Include projects when they show skills your work history does not, or when you are early in your career. Give each a link, a one-line description, the stack, and a measurable result (users, stars, downloads, performance). Two to four projects is enough. -->

| Project | What it is | Stack | Result | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Name] | [One line] | [Tech] | [Number or outcome] | [URL] |
| *Example:* tinyqueue | Embedded job queue for Go services with at-least-once delivery | Go, SQLite | 1,900 GitHub stars; used in production by 3 companies | github.com/[user]/tinyqueue |
| *Example:* Transit delay bot | Bot that posts live delay alerts for a city rail network | TypeScript, Cloudflare Workers | 4,300 daily users, < 50 ms median response | [URL] |

## Open source

<!-- Guidance: List meaningful contributions to projects other people use: merged pull requests, maintainer roles, releases you shipped. Link to the PR or changelog. Quantity of commits matters less than the significance of the change. -->

- [Role or contribution] to [project], [what changed and why it mattered] ([link to PR]).
- *Example:* Contributor to pgx (PostgreSQL driver for Go): added
  support for pipeline mode, reducing round trips for batched queries
  by up to 70% in benchmarks (PR #1234).
- *Example:* Maintainer of [project] since 2023: triage, releases
  (v2.0 to v2.6) and a contributor guide that doubled first-time
  contributions.

## Education

<!-- Guidance: Degree, institution, year. Add GPA, honours, thesis or relevant coursework only if you graduated in the last few years or the role asks for it. Experienced engineers put education after experience; new graduates may put it before. -->

**[Degree, Major]** · [University] · [YYYY]
[Optional: honours, thesis title, relevant coursework.]

*Example:* **BSc Computer Science** · University of Leeds · 2018.
Thesis: "Consistency trade-offs in geo-replicated key-value stores".

## Certifications

<!-- Guidance: Only current, relevant certifications. Include the issuer and the year; add a credential ID or verification link when the issuer offers one. -->

| Certification | Issuer | Year | Credential ID |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Name] | [Issuer] | [YYYY] | [ID or link] |
| *Example:* AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Associate | Amazon Web Services | 2025 | [ID] |
| *Example:* Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) | CNCF / The Linux Foundation | 2024 | [ID] |

## Additional (optional)

<!-- Guidance: Languages spoken, talks, publications, patents or awards. Keep it to one or two lines and only include items that support the target role. -->

- Languages: [English (fluent), Vietnamese (native)]
- Talks: [Title, Conference, YYYY]
- Awards: [Award, Issuer, YYYY]

## Tailoring and length notes

<!-- Guidance: This section is for you. Delete it before exporting the resume. -->

Use this checklist each time you adapt the master copy to a job posting.

**Tailoring**

1. Read the job description twice and highlight the five to eight
   skills or outcomes it repeats. Make sure each one appears, in the
   same wording, in your summary, skills or bullets, provided it is
   true.
2. Reorder bullets inside each role so the most relevant one comes
   first. Recruiters often read only the first two bullets.
3. Replace generic bullets with ones that match the company's scale
   and domain. A start-up values breadth and speed; a large company
   values scale, reliability and cross-team influence.
4. Adjust the title line to the role you want, as long as it
   honestly describes your work.
5. Remove technologies the target team does not use unless they show
   transferable depth.

**Length**

| Experience | Recommended length | What to cut first |
|---|---|---|
| Student or new graduate | 1 page | Coursework lists, high-school details |
| 1 to 7 years | 1 page | Projects already covered by work experience |
| 7 to 15 years | 1 to 2 pages | Roles older than 10 years (compress to one line) |
| 15+ years, staff or principal | 2 pages | Detailed bullets for early roles, outdated tools |

**Final checks**

- Every bullet starts with a verb and most contain a number.
- No spelling errors; company names and technologies use correct
  capitalisation (PostgreSQL, JavaScript, GitHub).
- Dates are consistent (`Mon YYYY`) and gaps are explainable.
- The PDF file name is `Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf`.
- Links open, and the GitHub profile shows pinned repositories that
  support the resume.

## Standard and licence note

Based on common industry practice for software engineering resumes and
recruiter screening. Original text written for this collection; example
companies, figures and projects are fictional. Template licence: MIT.