Software engineer résumé example (US, mid-level)

A complete résumé for a fictional software engineer, on US Letter in the Clarity template, with notes on why it works.

Dana Whitfield

Backend software engineer

Summary

Backend engineer with seven years building Go and Python services for logistics and healthcare data. Strongest at taking slow, fragile systems and making them fast, observable and cheap to run. Comfortable owning a service from design review to on-call.

Experience

Senior Software Engineer, Brightline Freight Systems

Columbus, OH | Mar 2023 – Present

Led the rewrite of the shipment-tracking API in Go, cutting p95 latency from 820 ms to 140 ms for 3,000 carrier integrations
Moved batch rating jobs from always-on EC2 instances to scheduled containers, saving $14,000 a month in compute
Introduced structured logging and service-level objectives across 11 services, reducing pages to on-call by 45% in two quarters
Designed an idempotent event pipeline on Kafka that removed roughly 1,200 duplicate invoices a month
Mentored four engineers through their first on-call rotations and wrote the runbooks the team still uses

Software Engineer, Kestrel Health Data

Columbus, OH | Jun 2020 – Feb 2023

Built a Python ingestion service that processed 40 million claims records a month from 25 insurer feeds
Replaced nightly full-table loads with incremental PostgreSQL syncs, shortening the reporting refresh from 6 hours to 35 minutes
Added contract tests between 6 internal services, cutting integration bugs reaching staging by roughly half
Automated HIPAA audit-log exports, saving the compliance team about 10 hours a week

Junior Software Engineer, Tallgrass Insurance Group

Dayton, OH | Jul 2019 – May 2020

Shipped 30+ fixes and small features to the policy administration system in Java and SQL
Wrote a test harness for premium calculations that caught 9 rating errors before release

Education

BS Computer Science, Lakeshore State University

Toledo, OH | 2015 – 2019

GPA 3.6

Skills

Languages: Go, Python, Java, TypeScript, SQL
Data: PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis, dbt
Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS), Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions
Practices: Service-level objectives, observability, code review, incident response

Certifications

AWS Certified Developer – Associate, Amazon Web Services, 2023

The same CV as plain text (what you'd paste into a job portal)

DANA WHITFIELD
Backend software engineer
dana.whitfield@example.com | (555) 010-2290 | Columbus, OH | github.com/dwhitfield-example | linkedin.com/in/dwhitfield-example

SUMMARY
Backend engineer with seven years building Go and Python services for logistics and healthcare data. Strongest at taking slow, fragile systems and making them fast, observable and cheap to run. Comfortable owning a service from design review to on-call.

EXPERIENCE
Senior Software Engineer, Brightline Freight Systems
Columbus, OH | Mar 2023 – Present
- Led the rewrite of the shipment-tracking API in Go, cutting p95 latency from 820 ms to 140 ms for 3,000 carrier integrations
- Moved batch rating jobs from always-on EC2 instances to scheduled containers, saving $14,000 a month in compute
- Introduced structured logging and service-level objectives across 11 services, reducing pages to on-call by 45% in two quarters
- Designed an idempotent event pipeline on Kafka that removed roughly 1,200 duplicate invoices a month
- Mentored four engineers through their first on-call rotations and wrote the runbooks the team still uses

Software Engineer, Kestrel Health Data
Columbus, OH | Jun 2020 – Feb 2023
- Built a Python ingestion service that processed 40 million claims records a month from 25 insurer feeds
- Replaced nightly full-table loads with incremental PostgreSQL syncs, shortening the reporting refresh from 6 hours to 35 minutes
- Added contract tests between 6 internal services, cutting integration bugs reaching staging by roughly half
- Automated HIPAA audit-log exports, saving the compliance team about 10 hours a week

Junior Software Engineer, Tallgrass Insurance Group
Dayton, OH | Jul 2019 – May 2020
- Shipped 30+ fixes and small features to the policy administration system in Java and SQL
- Wrote a test harness for premium calculations that caught 9 rating errors before release

EDUCATION
BS Computer Science, Lakeshore State University
Toledo, OH | 2015 – 2019
GPA 3.6

SKILLS
Languages: Go, Python, Java, TypeScript, SQL
Data: PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis, dbt
Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS), Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions
Practices: Service-level objectives, observability, code review, incident response

CERTIFICATIONS
AWS Certified Developer – Associate, Amazon Web Services, 2023

Why this works

Every bullet leads with what changed and by how much: latency, cost, incident counts, hours saved. A hiring manager can see the scale of the systems Dana has run without reading a single job description.
The summary is three plain sentences that name the stack, the domain and the kind of problem Dana is good at. There is no “passionate” or “results-driven”; the bullets prove those things instead.
Three roles with four or five bullets each fit on one US Letter page. The oldest role gets the fewest bullets because it matters least, which is how a mid-level résumé stays at one page without shrinking the font.
Skills are grouped (languages, data, infrastructure, practices) rather than dumped in one long line. Grouping helps a human scan the list and keeps every keyword in plain text for an applicant tracking system.
The single certification earns its place because it matches the AWS work described in the bullets. A certification that the experience does not back up adds little on a mid-level résumé.

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Dana Whitfield is a fictional person. Every employer, school, number and contact detail on this CV is invented.