ResumeProof

Role vocabulary

ATS resume keywords for Software Engineering

These are the 24 terms our scorer checks a Software Engineering resume against. It is the same list the free check uses, published in full.

Check my resume against these Build a Software Engineering resume

The vocabulary

Coverage is 25 of the 100 points. Sixty percent of this list is full marks, so you do not need all of it, and stuffing every term in is penalised separately.

  • javascript
  • typescript
  • python
  • java
  • react
  • node
  • api
  • rest
  • sql
  • git
  • docker
  • kubernetes
  • aws
  • azure
  • ci/cd
  • microservices
  • testing
  • agile
  • scrum
  • code review
  • system design
  • postgres
  • redis
  • performance

The eight questions for Software Engineering

The guided builder asks these, in this order, and turns each answer into a line on the page. Nothing is written that you did not type.

  1. 1.What scale does your system run at? Requests, users or data volume
  2. 2.How many services or repositories do you own?
  3. 3.What have you made measurably faster or cheaper, and by how much?
  4. 4.How often do you deploy, and what is your change failure rate?
  5. 5.Which languages and frameworks do you use daily, and for how long?
  6. 6.How many engineers are in your team, and have you led any of them?
  7. 7.What is the largest migration or rewrite you have delivered?
  8. 8.How many incidents have you been on call for and resolved?
Answer them and see your score before paying

Words are the easy half

A resume can carry every term above and still be rejected, because coverage says what you know and nothing about what you delivered. The heaviest category on the rubric is evidence: how many of your bullets carry an actual figure.

Seven in ten is full marks. Most resumes we see manage two.

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