Software engineer resume that shows impact, not just a tech stack
Recruiters skim an engineering resume in seconds, and most bullets say "worked on" instead of what changed. This prompt has your todo.is agent read the job post, pull out the stack and seniority it wants, and rewrite your experience as shipped results with scale, latency and reliability numbers.
The prompt
- Write my software engineer resume for this job: [JOB POST LINK]. My name is [YOUR NAME], based in [CITY OR REMOTE], email [EMAIL], GitHub [GITHUB OR PORTFOLIO LINK]. My experience: [PASTE YOUR CURRENT RESUME OR LIST ROLES, DATES, PROJECTS AND STACK]. Match the languages and frameworks the post asks for, but only ones I actually used. Write each bullet as action + what I built + measurable result (users, latency, uptime, cost, deploy time). Keep it to one page, single column, no skill bars or icons. Put a short Skills line grouped as Languages / Frameworks / Cloud & tools. Give me a Word file and a PDF, plus the list of keywords from the post you included.
What to change
- [JOB POST LINK]: The link to the job ad. Or paste the full job description if the site needs a login.
- [YOUR NAME]: Your full name for the header.
- [CITY OR REMOTE]: For example "Austin, TX" or "Remote (EU time zones)".
- [EMAIL]: A professional email address.
- [GITHUB OR PORTFOLIO LINK]: Your GitHub profile or personal site. Pin your best 2 or 3 repos before you apply.
- [PASTE YOUR CURRENT RESUME OR LIST ROLES, DATES, PROJECTS AND STACK]: Paste your old resume or rough notes, or attach it as a file. Include rough numbers if you know them (requests per second, users, build time).
Example result
- Daniel Okafor
- Austin, TX · daniel.okafor@email.com · github.com/dokafor
- Summary
- Backend software engineer with 5 years building payment and order services in Go and Python. Cut checkout latency by 40% and led the move of a monolith to 12 services on Kubernetes.
- Experience
- Software Engineer II, Tallyway · 2022 – today
- • Rebuilt the payment authorization service in Go, cutting p95 latency from 480 ms to 290 ms at 2,000 requests per second
- • Led the split of the order monolith into 12 services on Kubernetes (EKS), shrinking deploy time from 45 to 8 minutes
- • Added contract tests and canary releases, lowering production incidents from 9 to 3 per quarter
- • Mentored 3 junior engineers through code review and weekly pairing
- Software Engineer, Nimbus Retail · 2019 – 2022
- • Built a Python inventory sync that processes 1.5M SKU updates a day with Kafka and PostgreSQL
- • Wrote the caching layer (Redis) that cut database load by 35% during peak sales
- • Set up GitHub Actions CI with test coverage gates, raising coverage from 52% to 81%
- Projects
- ratelimit-go (open source, 600+ GitHub stars): token-bucket rate limiter used in production by several teams
- Skills
- Languages: Go, Python, TypeScript, SQL
- Frameworks: gRPC, FastAPI, React (basic)
- Cloud & tools: AWS (EKS, RDS, SQS), Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Kafka, Redis, Datadog
- Education
- B.S. Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas · 2019
How to do it with todo.is
- Copy the prompt and fill in each [bracket] with your own details.
- Paste it into todo.is on the Today screen, or send it to your agent on Telegram or WhatsApp. Attach your old resume if you have one.
- Your agent opens the job post, maps its stack to your experience and writes the resume.
- Download the Word file and PDF. Reply with changes like "lead with the Kubernetes migration" or "add my side project".
Tips for a better result
- Put numbers in every bullet: latency, throughput, users, uptime, cost saved or time saved. A rough estimate you can defend is better than none.
- List only technologies you could answer interview questions about. Padding the Skills line is the fastest way to fail a technical screen.
- For new grads, move Projects above Experience and link to the repos.
- Send each new job link to your agent: it remembers your history and retailors the stack and order of bullets for that role.
software engineer resume: FAQ
- How long should a software engineer resume be? One page for under about 8 years of experience. Senior and staff engineers can use two pages if the second page holds real, recent impact.
- Should I list every programming language I know? No. List the ones you use well and that the job asks for. Group them by type so a recruiter can scan them in a few seconds.
- Do I need a projects section? It helps most for juniors, career changers and open source contributors. Keep it to 1 to 3 projects with a link and one line on what each one does and how many people use it.
- Will an ATS read my resume? Yes. The prompt asks for one column, standard headings and no graphics, which applicant tracking systems parse reliably.
JavaScript is required to use the todo.is app.