Software Engineer · 2025

Resume keywords for software engineer jobs

Engineering JDs are dense with stack keywords. ATS systems and recruiters both filter on language, framework, and infra terms — so spell out every tool you've actually shipped with.

Hard skills

System designAPI designMicroservicesDistributed systemsTest-driven developmentCI/CDCode reviewPerformance optimizationConcurrencyData structuresAlgorithmsMentorshipOn-call

Tools & technologies

TypeScriptJavaScriptPythonGoJavaRustReactNode.jsPostgreSQLRedisKafkaDockerKubernetesAWSGCPTerraformGitHub Actions

Soft skills

Technical writingCross-team collaborationMentorshipPragmatic decision-makingIncident response

Action verbs to lead bullets

ShippedArchitectedRefactoredOptimizedMigratedInstrumentedHardenedReduced

Certifications worth listing

AWS Solutions ArchitectGoogle Cloud ProfessionalKubernetes CKAHashiCorp Terraform Associate

Bullet examples that use these keywords

Refactored the checkout service in Go, cutting p99 latency from 820ms to 140ms and saving $48K/yr in compute.
Shipped event-driven payments pipeline (Kafka + PostgreSQL) handling 12M tx/day with 99.99% delivery.
Migrated 24-service monolith to Kubernetes on AWS, reducing deploy time from 35 minutes to 4.

One tip that matters most

Pro tip

Recruiters scan the first stack line for must-haves. Stack first, scale second, outcome third — every bullet.

Test your resume against a real job

Paste your resume and the job description into the free ATS Resume Checker to see which of these keywords you're already hitting — and which you're missing.

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