Software developer résumé
The most keyword-filtered role there is. What matters is that the languages and systems appear as plain words in the body, not in a graphic or a rating bar.
- US median pay
- $135,980
- BLS, May 2025
- People doing it
- 1,687,890
- across the United States
- Ten-year outlook
- +10.2%
- projected change in employment
- AI exposure
- Moderate exposure
- scored two independent ways
What this one has to carry
Beyond the ordinary sections every résumé needs. These are the things filtered on for this particular role, and they have to appear as words in the body of the document.
- Languages and frameworks written out, in the sentences describing what you built
- What the thing you built was for, and how many people used it
- Scale as figures — requests, records, latency, team size
- The job title in its ordinary form; internal titles like "Engineer II, Platform" match nothing
The one that costs people this job
The skills matrix
A grid of logos with proficiency bars is the single most common developer résumé layout and it carries almost no readable text. The logos are images and the bars are shapes; what survives is a column of bare words with no context around them.
Where it is worth the most
Median pay divided by local prices, which is a different ordering from the sticker-salary tables and the one that decides what you keep.
| State | Median | Worth locally | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $174,410 | $157,523 | 284,390 |
| Massachusetts | $165,210 | $156,212 | 48,190 |
| Washington | $166,540 | $155,630 | 107,030 |
| New York | $166,180 | $153,984 | 113,510 |
| North Carolina | $134,710 | $142,807 | 58,470 |
Write it, free
Our builder writes the structure above and shows what a parser reads back as you type. Exports as PDF, Word or plain text. No account, and the download is not the paywall.
Open the free builderOr check the one you have
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