Software engineer resume: what hiring managers look for

Your resume is usually read first by a recruiter, then by an engineer. The recruiter checks for the required technologies and level. The engineer asks: what did this person actually build, how hard was it, and what changed because of it? A good developer resume answers both.

Group skills so they can be scanned in seconds — for example Languages, Frontend, Backend, Data, Cloud and Tools. List what you would be happy to be tested on first. Leave out tools you used once in a tutorial.

For each role, show scope and impact: what you owned, the technical challenge, and the result for users or the business. Mention scale where you can — users, requests, data size, team size — because it signals the difficulty of the work.

• “Designed and shipped a real-time notifications service in Node.js and Redis, handling about 2M events a day.”
• “Migrated a legacy jQuery front end to React and TypeScript, removing a class of runtime errors and speeding up feature work.”
• “Introduced automated tests and CI on GitHub Actions; releases went from monthly to weekly.”

Include a GitHub or portfolio link if it shows work you are proud of. For each project, give one line on the problem, the stack and something notable — users, performance, an interesting design choice. Pin your best repositories and add short READMEs; reviewers do click through.

• A wall of technologies with no evidence of using them.
• Bullets that describe the company’s product instead of your contribution.
• Skill bars or ratings — they say nothing measurable.
• Listing every framework version — “React” is enough unless the version matters for the job.
• Leaving out soft but real skills: code review, mentoring, writing design docs, working with product and design.