Software Engineer Resume Sample

As a software engineer, you have a top paying entry level job. That does not mean you can afford to be passive in the workplace, if you want to have a successful career.

As a software engineer, you are the kind of person who is attentive to detail, highly motivated, and averse to making mistakes. However, stereotypically speaking, engineer types tend to suffer from communication problems.

The issue is that while engineers are fluent amongst themselves, communicating their rather complex knowledge to laymen can either be impossible or frustrating.

Unfortunately, a resume is all about communication. It’s meant to communicate your skills, achievements, accomplishments, competence, and personality — all in one page or two. That may seem impossible. If you’ve seen Apollo 13, maybe accomplishing that feat reminds you of this famous clip?

That was an incredible feat of engineering — and you’ll have to do the same with your resume. Consider these questions:

1. What kind of skills do you have?

Every branch of engineering has its own very specialized language, tools, concepts, and problems. That much is obvious.

But even within your own branch of engineering, you may possess some form of expertise as a result of either self study, formal education, or naturally learned from your work experience.

The technical and practical knowledge that you’ve accumulated can be displayed on your resume in a number of places — a summary of qualifications, within your professional experience, or in your skills section at the end of your resume.

However, there is more to your resume than just a list of skills.

2. How do you use, or how have you used your skills creatively?

This is the critical question that can make or break your resume. As someone who has studied engineering, or worked professionally in some regard, you’ve probably encountered classmates or co-workers who are knowledgeable and “book smart,” but can’t seem to put it to good use.

This is a classic problem in countries with authoritarian school practices — the students are sharp, with impressive memories, but they couldn’t cut their way out of a paper bag. (And definitely wouldn’t be able to solve the problem from Apollo 13 in the above clip!)

When writing your resume, you need to think back on your major creative accomplishments in your field. Maybe you invented more efficient methods or processes, improved safety standards, or solved complex problems through some ingenious solution. Communicate that information in your professional experience section.

3. Do you provide leadership?

If you’ve been asked to lead projects or train new hires, it’s probably because you have good leadership skills. Leadership is about keeping up morale, motivation, and knowing how to effectively assign tasks to the people who seem to be the most capable.

If you’re an entry-level candidate although you may not have any formal leadership experience that you can put on your resume, group projects from university are also kosher to include, provided that they weren’t too simple. Basically, if you’re an engineer with social skills and leadership capability, you’re bound to go far.

4. Do you have any long-term goals or side projects?

Caution! Your resume is a document that is meant to respond directly to the employer’s needs. However, engineering is a field where you can play with the rules a little bit. Often, engineering side projects or open-source projects on GitHub help develop new skills and knowledge.

And given that engineering can be so highly specialized, it is somewhat likely that any projects you have may be related to, or of some benefit to your potential employer. You may find that your project piques the interest of a hiring manager.

Having considered the above questions, you are now prepared to start writing the meat of your resume.

What to Include on Your Resume

The following sections are normally included in an engineering resume. For our full guide, read how to write a resume.

1. Contact Details:

Always be sure to include your important contact details at the top of your resume such as your address, phone number, email, and perhaps your LinkedIn profile.

2. Resume Objective: 

When writing your resume objective, don’t go over two sentences. At the same time, you want to pack these two sentences full of the experiences, knowledge, and qualifications that make you the most qualified candidate for the position you are applying for.

You can include a lot of relevant information in a tightly condensed space – just look at our sample above to see how it can be done.

Even though we suggest a career objective this may not be the ideal scenario depending on your experience. See why you should write a qualifications summary instead of a career objective and how this may assist you getting that next engineering interview.

3. Professional Experience:

First and foremost, this section should be written in reverse-chronological order. However, if you have missing work experience, you may need to hide those weak spots with a functional or combination resume. To write this section well, refer to the questions we outlined above.

Companies are not looking for engineers who are capable of completing mundane tasks — they need motivated employees that are creative problem solvers and strong leaders. Your biggest accomplishment should be in the first bullet point that you write.

Whatever you do, do not lie on your resume.

4. Education Section:

If you’re a recent graduate, include your GPA. Only list your high school if you haven’t attended college.

5. Technical Training:

This section is unique to engineering (and other technical) resumes. Through training, you learn valuable skills that can make you a more effective employee and team member — therefore, you should absolutely include this section.

6. (Affiliations):

This section is in parentheses because it is not absolutely necessary. However, it may be of some benefit to include on some versions of your resume, if you feel that the employer would be interested.

7. Additional Skills:

Computer skills, such as software like AutoCAD may be relevant to your engineer resume. Feel free to include your projects in this section as well.

Want to really make your resume stand out?

Simply enhance the important aspects of your resume with adjectives.

Do you have any particular achievements or skills that you want to strengthen on your resume? Strategically adding some choice adjectives is a quick and easy way to accomplish this. We’ve compiled some of the best adjectives for software engineers below:

Advanced	Cutting-edge	Innovative
Attentive	Economical	Proficient
Capable	Focused	Robust
Complex	Groundbreaking	Sophisticated
Cost-effective	Ingenious	Sustainable

For more details on how to properly use them to enhance your resume, check out our comprehensive guide and list of resume adjectives.

And if you still need help, let our intuitive resume builder create the perfect resume for you in minutes.