Presenting your stack
A stack section is useful. A stack section that lists every tool you have ever touched is not. The strongest versions group by category — languages, frameworks, data stores, cloud platforms — and keep each group to the technologies you would confidently discuss in an interview.
If a technology is on your resume, be ready to answer questions about it. Interviewers check.
Framing projects
Every project bullet should answer three questions: what the system did, what your specific contribution was, and what changed because it existed. The third is where most resumes fail.
- Before: "Worked on the payments service."
- After: "Rebuilt the payments service on a queue-based architecture, cutting p99 checkout latency from 2.1s to 380ms and reducing failed transactions by 12%."
Impact metrics
Engineers often resist quantifying their work because "the code speaks for itself". It does not, at least not in a resume. Recruiters and hiring managers cannot see the code. They can see latency, throughput, uptime, deployment frequency, cost, and user adoption.
When you do not have a directly measurable outcome, describe the scope of the change: number of services touched, number of teams affected, or size of the codebase migrated.
Formatting for technical roles
A single-column, ATS-safe layout is the safe default. Many engineering roles go through automated screens, and the formats that handle those cleanly also read well in a technical review.
If you are applying to a company that reviews resumes manually — a startup, a research lab, a design-adjacent product team — a two-column layout with a technical skills sidebar is also fine.
Open source and side projects
Significant open source contributions belong on the resume. One-off commits do not. If a project demonstrates real engineering judgment — architecture, testing, documentation, review — include it with the same rigour you would use for a paid role.
Job titles
Use the title you were given. If your company used an internal title that does not map to the industry, put the industry title in parentheses: "Software Engineer II (Senior Backend Engineer)". Do not invent titles.
Education for technical roles
For senior engineers, education belongs near the bottom of the resume. For engineers with less than three years of experience, it belongs near the top — right after the summary.
The Technology & Engineering category includes single-column ATS-safe layouts, sidebar layouts with a skills column, and timeline layouts that make project history legible at a glance.