Software engineer with experience building reliable web applications, improving system performance, and shipping user-facing features with React, TypeScript, Node.js, and cloud services.
Adapt it to the target job
Keep the opening specific
Avoid generic personal qualities without evidence
Lead with the stack recruiters scan for
UK tech recruiters often skim for language, framework, cloud, testing, and delivery signals before reading the full CV.
Group skills by frontend, backend, cloud, testing, and tooling
Put strongest commercial technologies in the first half of the CV
Avoid long unranked lists of every tool used once
Turn engineering work into outcomes
A strong software engineer CV explains what changed because of your work, not only what technology you used.
Mention latency, reliability, conversion, cost, or deployment frequency improvements
Show ownership across discovery, implementation, testing, and release
Use project scope where metrics are unavailable
Make projects credible
Projects work best when they describe the user problem, your architecture choices, and the result.
Name the product area or user workflow
Include testing, accessibility, security, or observability where relevant
Link GitHub or portfolio only when it helps the application
Examples
Copy the structure, then tailor it to the role.
Profile example
Software engineer with 4 years of experience delivering SaaS features in React, TypeScript, Node.js, and PostgreSQL, with recent work improving onboarding performance and release reliability.
Names seniority
Includes stack
Connects work to product outcomes
Achievement bullet
Reduced dashboard load time by 38% by splitting heavy bundles, optimising API queries, and adding route-level caching for high-traffic customer pages.
How long should a software engineer CV be in the UK?
Most UK software engineer CVs should be two pages, unless you are very early career or applying for an academic-style technical role.
Should I include every programming language I know?
No. Prioritise the languages and frameworks relevant to the target role, especially those you have used commercially or in strong portfolio projects.
Do software engineer CVs need projects?
Projects are useful for graduates, career changers, and developers with limited commercial experience. Experienced engineers should prioritise work impact first.
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