These are the skills, tools, certifications and verbs an ATS scans for on a software engineer resume, and they work the same for software developer resumes, computer science resumes und engineering resumes. Developers and engineers across frontend, backend, mobile and full-stack roles who want a clean two-column layout that puts a tech-skills block and projects up front. Start with the core list, then add the set for your specialty further down, and tailor both to the exact wording of the job you're applying to.
Across 1,711 resumes run through our free ATS resume checker between August 28 and October 20, 2026, these were among the terms most often suggested for the resume's target role and absent from its text. The figure is the share of all checked resumes, and the checker's users lean toward software and data roles. Full method in our ATS and resume statistics study.
The core list above is what every software engineer ad shares. The specialty is what a recruiter actually filters on, so add the set that matches the job you're applying to. To get the exact list for one ad, follow the method in our ATS keywords list guide.
APIs, services and the data behind them.
In a bullet: Built the payment service's REST APIs in Go, with PostgreSQL for orders and Kafka carrying events to the warehouse team.
The interface in the browser.
In a bullet: Rebuilt the checkout in React and TypeScript to WCAG 2.1 AA, with Jest tests covering every step of the flow.
Infrastructure, deployment and reliability (also SRE and platform roles).
In a bullet: Moved deployments to Terraform and GitHub Actions on AWS, and wrote the alerts and runbooks the on-call rotation works from.
Models in production, from training to serving.
In a bullet: Trained and deployed a PyTorch ranking model, with the feature pipeline in Pandas and an A/B test deciding each release.
Native and cross-platform apps.
In a bullet: Shipped the iOS app in SwiftUI with offline sync, and ran every App Store release for the team.
The terms that signal scope beyond your own code.
In a bullet: Led the system design for splitting the monolith, wrote the design documents, and mentored two engineers through the migration.
Single readable text column for parsing, with a skills sidebar recruiters scan first. No icons or graphics that confuse ATS keyword extraction.
The fastest way to find the right keywords for a specific job is to let the tailoring do it for you. ApplyMate reads your resume and the job description, then rewrites your resume around the keywords that posting actually asks for. Start with the Software Engineer resume template, put the strongest ones straight into your software engineer resume summary, or run a posting through our job description keyword finder and read how to tailor your resume to a job description.
A software engineer resume should include role-specific hard skills (Software development, Data structures & algorithms, REST APIs, Microservices), the tools you use (Python, JavaScript, Java), relevant certifications, and strong action verbs. Always mirror the exact terms in the job description you're applying to.
Pull the exact terms from the job posting and weave the ones you genuinely have into your summary, skills and experience. ApplyMate does this automatically: it reads your resume and the job description, then rewrites your resume around the keywords that posting actually asks for, in an ATS-ready layout.
Mostly. Recruiters use the two titles interchangeably, and the hard skills and tools above apply to both. What changes the keywords is the specialty, not the title: a backend role screens on APIs, databases and distributed systems, a frontend role on TypeScript, React and accessibility. Use the job title the ad uses in your headline, since that is the first thing a recruiter searches for.
Lead with the languages and tools you have actually shipped something with (Python, Java, JavaScript, SQL, Git), then the fundamentals an entry-level screen checks: data structures and algorithms, object-oriented programming, unit testing and version control. Put each one next to a project, internship or course result that proves it, not only in a skills list.
In ApplyMate's 2026 study of 1,711 resumes run through our free ATS checker, the software terms near the top of the list of keywords suggested for the target role and absent from the resume were Agile, Kubernetes, CI/CD, SQL, AWS, unit testing, Python and Docker. The checker's users lean toward software and data roles, which is part of why these terms lead the list. Before adding one, check whether you did the work under another name: a pipeline you described as "automated deployments" is CI/CD to a recruiter's search.
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