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Software engineer CVs in 2026 are judged on three things: specific technologies, evidence of shipped work, and quantified outcomes. Below, the structure that gets callbacks, plus the bullet patterns recruiters skim for.
Python, Go, TypeScript, Java, Rust (pick what's on the JD)
React, Next.js, Node.js, Django, FastAPI, Spring Boot
PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ
AWS / GCP / Azure, be specific (ECS, Lambda, BigQuery, GKE)
Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, GitLab)
System design, distributed systems, microservices, REST, GraphQL
Observability: Datadog, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry
Only include skills you can defend in an interview. Inflated skill lists fail the first phone screen.
A projects section, ideally 2-4 real projects with tech stack + outcome + GitHub link
Open-source contributions if any, no matter how small
Quantified outcomes (latency, throughput, cost, users)
Ownership signal: 'Designed', 'Led', 'Owned', not 'Worked on'
Weak
Was responsible for building backend APIs using Python and PostgreSQL.
Strong
Designed and shipped a FastAPI billing service on AWS ECS handling 2.5M monthly transactions; reduced p99 latency from 480ms to 120ms.
Weak
Helped with migrating the database.
Strong
Led the zero-downtime migration from a 300GB MySQL cluster to Aurora PostgreSQL; completed in 6 weeks with 4 replicas staged.
Weak
Worked on improving system performance.
Strong
Reduced checkout API p95 latency by 60% (340ms → 135ms) by replacing N+1 queries with a single join and adding a Redis cache layer.
A CLI that solves a real annoyance (even 300 lines of Go)
A Chrome extension with 100+ installs
An open-source PR merged into a well-known repo
A weekend SaaS with a live URL
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