Software engineer CV examples
Software engineering is a rewarding and respected career path for innovative and curious professionals. Software engineers play an integral role in any product development team and can be found working in front-end, back-end, DevOps, and QA. Collaborating with product architects, delivery leads and product owners in an agile SDLC environment, software engineers play an essential role in software development.
Your software engineer CV should illustrate your software specialisms and how you have proven your abilities within a previous product development environment. Software engineers should highlight their skills, from coding to testing, working with DevOps. Depending on the company, software engineers can perform various tasks and use many different tools to deliver results. Make sure you list all your skills in your CV, such as identifying the tool stack you've used and the programming languages you speak.
Whether you design apps, SaaS or computer games, myPerfectCV simplifies creating a powerful software engineer CV to focus on what you do best - engineering world-class software. Explore our selection of software engineer CV samples before building your own with our recruiter-approved CV builder.
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Writing the perfect software engineer CV has never been easier, choose from our professionally-designed CV templates, edit and personalise your CV in minutes. Use our software engineer CV example to start your CV today.
Top recruiter tips for your software engineer CV
Software engineers are degree-trained computer science professionals who use engineering principles and programming languages to build software products, and run network control systems. While you might be the best programmer, you might not be the best at creating the best CV. Here are our top recruiter tips for producing a great CV first time:
Use keywords in your skill section
Software engineers play an integral function in the engineering team, leading to new product ideas. Adding detail about the stack and tools you've used will show the recruiter that you're the right choice for the job. Be sure to use the job description, and tick off the keywords they might be looking for. If you do this, you can be sure to get the recruiters attention. Recruiters and companies often use automatic scanning software that looks for specific keywords in your CV (all myPerfectCV's are ATS compliant).
Bring your personality to the table
Many software engineers will have a similar skill set, using the same stack and tools to develop software. To stand out, you'll need to showcase your personal capabilities, also known as soft skills, these will include teamwork, empathy, and communication. Use the summary statement section at the top of your CV to talk in more general terms about what a company can expect from you in the team. Give examples of how well you've worked in a group and what you bring to the table aside from kick-ass agile methodologies and CI/CD processes!
Don't overwhelm your CV
The ideal CV length, no matter your experience level is 2 pages. Why? Because recruiters are likely to be going through hundreds of CVs, you need to make yours as concise as possible. 2 pages are enough to get experience, skills, and education without waffling too much. If you have over 10 years of experience, it is acceptable to include up to 10 years, and a briefer version of your older experience.
Illustrate your leadership experience
As a software engineer, you'll need to lead a varied group of employees and freelancers, coordinating work according to deadlines. Demonstrate a proven track record of leadership by using your personal statement at the top of your software engineer CV to explain your leadership style. You may need to closely manage your team to ensure you meet deadlines and rally the team to get work done. Because of this, you'll need to have a firm and fair management style.
Use a template
Following a template for your software engineer CV is by far the quickest way to create a professional CV. Templates allow you to fill in section by section and do the formatting for you so that you can focus on your technical skills and experience, rather than the spacing, font, and colours. Increase efficiency by using a template that suits your industry.
What skills should you include on your software engineer CV?
Software engineers possess a varied, technical skillset that depends on the role. Whatever the role, software engineers are people with a keen eye for detail who write clean and responsive code and love working in a team environment.
Must-have skills for your software engineer CV
- Cloud computing expertise
- Agile methodologies
- Waterfall methodologies
- Data structures, programming, and algorithms
- Coding
- Designing software
- Web development
- Operating systems
- Process analysis
- Database technologies
- Programming languages (JavaScript, CSS, HTML, Go, Ruby, C#, SQL, C, C++, Java, PHP, Python)
Further software engineer skills
- Data analysis
- Data engineering
- Code analysis
- Source Control
- System Design
- DevOps Practices
- Machine Learning
- Development Tools
- Software Testing
Top-rated questions about your software engineer CV
How should you structure your software engineer CV?
A software engineer CV should be structured in the same way as any other CV, with clearly defined sections and a simple layout. Your CV should be no longer than 2-pages in total length and capture your technical skills in detail. The flow should be as per our software engineer sample CV.
For reference, a comprehensive structure for a software engineer CV would include the following sections:
- Name / header
- Personal statement
- Work experience
- Skills (Soft and hard)
- Education
- Hobbies
What are the responsibilities of a software engineer?
As a software engineer, your responsibilities may include:
- Leading the design and build of new software
- Directing a team of programmers and engineers
- Analysing and interpreting user requirements
- Analysing and reporting on system security
- Writing and testing code, refining and rewriting it
- Researching, outlining, and writing new software releases
- Assessing the software and systems that make computers and hardware work
- Expanding existing programs by analysing and identifying areas for modification
- Blending existing software products
- Authoring technical specifications
- Maintaining systems by monitoring and correcting software defects
- Working closely with other personnel, such as project managers, graphic designers, UX designers, developers, and systems analysts
- Updating clients on the maintenance and performance of the software
- Investigating new technologies and keep up to date with latest in innovation
Who hires software engineers?
Software engineers are often hired by chief information officers, heads of product, or engineering heads. A software engineer's role might be recruited by a recruitment agency, working on behalf of a company that builds software or systems.
How much do software engineers make in the UK?
A graduate software engineer salary in the UK may start from £18,000 a year, and the UK average annual wage for a software engineer is between £25,000 and £50,000. Senior software engineers can expect to earn upwards of £70,000. This depends on the business and industry that your work within, startups, for example, may offer lower salaries spending on investment. Large software giants may offer larger salaries, bonus, and equity schemes.
Start your software engineer CV and apply for jobs today
Show future employers that you know your Node.JS from your Ruby on Rails and understand the importance of DevSecOps in a CI/CD environment. With a comprehensive software engineer CV using myPerfectCV's agile builder, you can illustrate the skills and experience that make you the best candidate for the job.
Use our software engineer CV example to spark inspiration with our easy-to-use CV content. Begin the next step of your career journey today.
