Software Engineer Resume Keywords (Action Verbs + ATS Examples)
Engineering hiring managers scan for verbs that imply ownership and impact: shipped, reduced, designed, led, migrated. Weak verbs hide scope.
Shipping & delivery verbs
Core SWE story.
- shipped
- implemented
- designed
- refactored
- migrated
- rolled out
- owned
- led
- delivered
- cut over
Weak: Developed features
Strong: Shipped billing API migration with zero-downtime cutover and 40% latency reduction.
Weak: Worked on backend
Strong: Designed idempotent webhook processor handling 2M events/day.
Performance & reliability verbs
Shows seniority.
- optimized
- profiled
- reduced latency
- improved uptime
- eliminated
- hardened
- load tested
- fixed memory leaks
- tuned
- scaled
Weak: Made it faster
Strong: Profiled hot path; reduced p95 latency 28% via caching and query fixes.
Weak: Improved reliability
Strong: Cut incident rate 35% with SLOs, alerts, and postmortem follow-through.
Quality & safety verbs
Modern engineering expectations.
- added tests
- increased coverage
- caught regressions
- automated
- instrumented
- added observability
- flagged
- canaried
- rolled back
- patched
Weak: Testing
Strong: Expanded integration tests around payment edge cases; prevented three regressions pre-prod.
Weak: Monitoring
Strong: Instrumented traces linking API to DB spans; cut MTTR during incidents.
Collaboration verbs (specific, not vague)
How you work with others.
- partnered with
- aligned with
- coordinated
- reviewed
- mentored
- documented
- presented design
- negotiated scope
- unblocked
- facilitated
Weak: Team player
Strong: Partnered with PM/design to scope MVP; delivered incremental releases behind flags.
Weak: Collaborated
Strong: Led design review for auth refactor with security and mobile stakeholders.
Weak phrasing to avoid
Common resume padding.
- assisted with
- helped with
- participated in
- involved in
- supported
- general development
- various tasks
- learned
- exposed to
Weak: Participated in agile ceremonies
Strong: Owned sprint outcomes for payments domain; shipped two releases with zero Sev-1 incidents.
Weak: Supported production
Strong: Owned on-call rotation; reduced repeat incidents via runbook updates.
Where to use these keywords (ATS + readability)
Experience bullets
Lead with outcome when possible: ‘Cut costs 18% by…’ then how.
Experience bullets
Use ‘owned’ when you had end-to-end accountability—not for small tasks.
Summary
Strong opener: years + domain + specialty (APIs, infra, product eng).
Skills
Keep verbs out of skills unless ‘public speaking’-style soft skills.
Experience bullets
Quantify: latency, uptime, cost, incidents, throughput.
Common mistakes
- Same verb repeated every bullet—readability suffers.
- Overclaiming ‘architected’ for small changes.
- Buzzwords without evidence: ‘innovated’, ‘synergized’.
- Passive voice hiding ownership: ‘was responsible for’.