Resume examples / Software Engineer

Software Engineer Resume Example (2026)

A two-page senior software engineer resume example, written to match what 10 live postings actually ask for, with notes on why each part works.

One-page software engineer resume example for Daniel Okonkwo, 8 years' experience, in the Opal template

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Two pages, rendered in the Opal template. Scroll the image to see all of it.

The example in full

Daniel Okonkwo

Senior Software Engineer

Austin, United States · daniel.okonkwo@example.com · +1 (415) 555-0163 · github.com/example-daniel · linkedin.com/in/example-daniel

Summary

Senior software engineer with 8 years building service-oriented backends in Java and Python. Owns features end to end, from problem framing through deployment and on-call, and has cut latency and infrastructure cost on systems serving millions of requests a day. Mentors two to three engineers at a time.

Experience

Senior Software Engineer, Northwind Payments

04.2022 – Present

Designed and developed service-oriented architecture for the payouts platform, replacing a monolith path that handled 4M requests a day; cut p95 latency from 840ms to 210ms.
Owned delivery of merchant refunds end to end — problem framing, design review, rollout behind a feature flag, and the on-call runbook that followed it.
Built the CI/CD pipeline in GitHub Actions that took the team from weekly releases to 12 deploys a day, with automated rollback on error-rate regression.
Reduced AWS spend 31% ($18K/month) by right-sizing Kubernetes workloads and moving batch reconciliation to spot instances.
Mentored three engineers through their first year; two were promoted to mid-level within 18 months.
Led the incident review process for the payments group, taking repeat incidents from 9 a quarter to 2.

Software Engineer, Cedarline Logistics

06.2019 – 03.2022

Built REST and gRPC services in Java (Spring Boot) for shipment tracking used by 40+ carrier integrations.
Led the migration of 1.2M records from MySQL to PostgreSQL with zero downtime and no data loss, two days ahead of schedule.
Added structured logging, metrics and tracing across six services, cutting median incident diagnosis from 45 minutes to 12.
Collaborated with the security team to close 23 findings from an external penetration test, including an authentication bypass in the partner API.

Junior Software Engineer, Bellrock Systems

01.2018 – 05.2019

Developed internal tooling in Python and React used daily by a 30-person operations team.
Wrote the unit and integration test suite for the billing module, lifting coverage from 38% to 84%.
Ran the fortnightly engineering brown-bag and onboarded two interns.

Education

B.S. Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin — 08.2014 – 12.2017

Skills

Java · Python · TypeScript · Spring Boot · React · PostgreSQL · REST & gRPC APIs · Microservices · AWS · Kubernetes · Terraform · CI/CD (GitHub Actions) · Observability & monitoring · Application security · Agile / Scrum · Docker · Git · Linux

Certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, Amazon Web Services (05.2023)

Why this example works

The summary answers "what do you do" in one line

Eight years, the two languages, and the thing the postings keep asking for — owning something end to end. No adjectives about being passionate or hard-working, which say nothing a recruiter can check.

Every bullet ends somewhere, not in a duty

"Cut p95 latency from 840ms to 210ms" and "reduced AWS spend 31% ($18K/month)" are checkable. Compare "responsible for backend performance", which describes the job description rather than the person.

The wording mirrors the postings, truthfully

Service-oriented architecture, CI/CD, on-call, mentoring and security all appear because they recur in the postings we sampled — and because this person actually did them. Mirroring language you can't back up is how interviews go wrong.

Page two earns its place

Six bullets for the current role, four for the one before, three for the first: space follows recency. A second page is fine at this level as long as nothing on it is filler.

It's single-column and parses cleanly

Rendered in Opal, one of our ATS-friendly templates: one column, standard headings, contact details in the body rather than the page header, no icons standing in for words.

What software engineer postings actually ask for

We pulled 10 live postings (software engineer, United States) on 24 September 2026 and counted what they mention — counted across all 10 descriptions, so a posting that repeats a term counts each time. The example above uses these terms where they are genuinely true of the person, which is the only way to use them.

Term	Mentions across those postings
Security	20
Java	13
Cloud	13
Performance	13
Python	10
JavaScript	6
SQL	5
Agile	5
CI/CD	4
REST / APIs	4
Linux	4
React	3
AWS	3
PostgreSQL	3

How those postings describe the work, in their own words:

“design and develop scalable, service-oriented software architectures”
“own the software solutions that are deployed to customers”
“collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable and resilient applications”
“own delivery of a client-facing capability end to end — from problem framing through deployment”
“partner with end-users to turn needs into features”

Mistakes to avoid on a software engineer resume

Listing every technology you've touched

A 40-item skills list reads as noise and invites questions you can't answer. Fifteen you can be interviewed on is stronger than forty you can't.

Describing the team's work, not yours

"We migrated the platform" tells a recruiter nothing about you. Say what you owned, and use "led" or "built" only where it's true.

Burying the stack in prose

If the posting screens for Java and Kubernetes, those words need to appear where they can be found: in the summary, in the bullet where you used them, and in the skills list.

GitHub links with nothing behind them

An empty profile is worse than no link. Either pin something you're happy to discuss, or leave it off.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a software engineer resume be?

One page for the first five or six years. This example runs to two pages because eight years of delivery, mentoring and incident work doesn't compress honestly into one — and shrinking the font to force it would be the wrong fix.

Should I include personal projects?

Early in your career, yes — they stand in for work experience. With eight years behind you, a project only earns space if it shows something your jobs don't.

Do I need a GitHub link?

It helps when there's something on it you'd happily walk through in an interview. A link to an empty or abandoned profile works against you.

Should I write a different resume for every application?

Not a different resume — a different version. Keep one master file and change the summary, the skills order and three to five bullets per posting.

Is it safe to use a two-column design?

For an online application at a large employer, no: a parser reads across the page and merges the columns. Where a person opens the file first, it's fine.