ATS-friendly software engineer resume template

A single-column, reverse-chronological resume with plain section headings, your contact details in the first lines of the page, and a PDF exported from a text editor or LaTeX (not a scan or an image). That format is the safe default for every major applicant tracking system, and it is also the format engineering recruiters find fastest to skim.

The reasoning is simple once you know what an ATS does with your file. When you apply, the system tries to split your resume into fields: name, email, employers, titles, dates, education. Greenhouse's support article on unsuccessful resume parses says that when this fails, the resume is only attached to the candidate and the profile fields are not filled in. It lists the usual causes, and almost every one is a layout choice: columns, complex tables, text boxes, headers and footers, graphics, letters with spaces between them.

So an ATS-friendly software engineer resume template is mostly about what it leaves out. The content still has to do the selling, and that part is covered further down.

This is a made-up engineer with realistic numbers. Copy the structure and write your own claims. Everything here is plain text in one column, so it survives parsing and a copy-paste into a text box on an application form.

The settings behind it:

• Font: Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Garamond or the default LaTeX font, 10 to 11pt for body text.
• Margins: 0.5 to 0.75 inch. Narrow margins are fine; text in the header or footer area is not.
• Dates: month and year, written the same way in every entry ("Jun 2022 - Present").
• Links: written out as text (github.com/dokafor), so they show up even if the hyperlink is lost.
• Bullets: standard round bullets or hyphens, one line or two, starting with a verb.
• File: text-based PDF, well under 2.5MB.

If you would rather not format it yourself, the free Jake's Resume template follows the same rules, and you can get it as a PDF, LaTeX source, or through our builder.

Each row below is a choice you make when you set up the document. The left column is what to pick; the right column is why.

None of this is exciting, and it shouldn't be. A resume that looks like a well-kept README is doing its job.

Greenhouse's parse-failure list, with the version of each problem that shows up most often on engineering resumes:

• Columned layouts. The two-column template with a skills sidebar on the left. Text from the sidebar can end up mixed into your job history. We go through when it is acceptable in can software engineers use two-column resumes?
• Complex tables. Word and Google Docs templates that use an invisible table to put the date on the right. Turn on table gridlines to check.
• Headers, footers and text boxes. Name and email placed in the document header so they repeat on page two. Put them in the body instead.
• Graphics, photos and word art. Skill bars, tech logos, a screenshot of your GitHub contribution graph, a headshot.
• Image instead of a document. A resume exported from Figma or a design tool as a flattened image, or a scanned printout.
• Spaces between letters. Headings typed as "E X P E R I E N C E" for a letter-spaced look. Use real character spacing or none.
• Unclear or inconsistent sections. Projects mixed into Experience with no heading, or one job formatted differently from the rest.
• Incomplete titles and company names. Greenhouse even mentions company names without identifiers like Inc. or LLC. You don't need to add "Inc." everywhere, but write out the job title.

Plenty of resumes with one of these still parse. The point of an ATS-friendly template is that you don't have to find out which one failed on the job you wanted.

Header first, then whichever section holds your strongest evidence. For most working engineers that is Experience. The order changes by career stage:

A summary is optional. If you use one, keep it to two lines that say what you build and at what scale, and put it under the header. Our guide to whether software engineers need a summary has examples.

You can find most problems in a couple of minutes without paying for a scanner.

1. Select all and copy. Open the PDF, press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac). If the text doesn't highlight, the file is an image and no ATS can read it.
2. Paste into a plain text editor. Check that your name and email come first, each job's title, company and dates sit together, and nothing from a sidebar has landed in the middle of a bullet.
3. Look for broken characters. Missing "fi" and "fl" pairs (ligatures), boxes where bullets were, or symbols in place of icons. These usually come from fancy fonts or icon fonts.
4. Run pdftotext if you have it. pdftotext resume.pdf - prints the raw text order, which is closer to what a parser sees than the visual page.
5. Check the file size. Anything near 2.5MB usually has an embedded image or font you can drop.

If you want a second opinion on structure, our free resume format checker and ATS resume scanner show how your file parses and which sections came through.

Follow the application's instructions first. If it doesn't say, a text-based PDF is the normal choice for engineering roles: it looks the same on every machine, and the large ATS platforms read it. Greenhouse names .pdf and .docx as supported and says image files are not.

Two situations where DOCX is the better pick: the posting or a recruiter asks for Word, or you are applying through an agency that edits resumes before sending them on.

What matters more than the extension is how the PDF was made. Export it from Google Docs, Word or LaTeX. Don't print to PDF from a browser preview of a design tool, and never upload a phone scan.

Yes, but not in the way most "beat the ATS" advice suggests. Recruiters can search the candidates stored in an ATS by skill and title. If the posting says Kubernetes and your resume only says K8s, a search for Kubernetes may miss you. The Tech Interview Handbook gives the same advice: mirror the job description's wording and spell out abbreviations, such as Amazon Web Services next to AWS.

• Use the exact names from the posting when they are true for you: "PostgreSQL" if it says PostgreSQL, "React" if it says React.
• Spell out an acronym once: "Amazon Web Services (AWS)", "continuous integration (CI)".
• Put the important ones in bullets as well as in Skills. A keyword attached to a result is worth more to the human reader.
• Don't paste the job description in white text or list 60 technologies. Recruiters read the resume, and it shows.

The second version contains four searchable terms the first one is missing, and it also tells a hiring manager what you actually did. Our bullet point guide has more rewrites by role.

LaTeX: usually yes, if the template is single column and compiled to a normal PDF. Jake's Resume, the most common LaTeX template for software engineers, sets \pdfgentounicode=1 with a source comment saying it is there so the PDF is machine readable and ATS parsable. Deedy and similar two-column LaTeX templates carry the column risk described above. See our Overleaf template guide for single-column options.

Google Docs and Word: safe if you build in normal paragraphs. Many downloadable templates use tables, text boxes or headers for layout, so check before you fill one in. Our Google Docs and Word templates are built without them.

Canva and design tools: pages there are made of positioned text boxes and shapes, which is exactly what Greenhouse's list warns about. More detail in should software engineers use a Canva resume?

Usually not for formatting. The widely shared claim that 75% of resumes are rejected by ATS before a person sees them traces back to a 2012 sales pitch from Preptel, a resume company that closed in 2013; HR consultant Christine Assaf looked for a study behind it and found none (HiringThing).

In a small Enhancv study of 25 US recruiters, published in November 2025, 92% said their system does not auto-reject resumes based on formatting, design, keywords or match scores (IT Brief). Enhancv sells resume tools and the sample is small, so treat it as a signal rather than proof. The automatic filters recruiters did describe were knockout checks on the application: work authorization, location, required licenses, minimum qualifications.

What actually goes wrong with a badly parsed resume is quieter. Your profile has empty or wrong fields, a recruiter's search for "Go" plus "Senior Software Engineer" may not surface you, and the person who does open it sees a scrambled file. That is reason enough to use a clean template.

Yes, the two point the same way. Ladders' 2018 eye-tracking study measured an average initial screen of 7.4 seconds, and found that simple layouts with clear section and job headings held attention, while cluttered pages, multiple columns and long sentences did not (HR Dive).

A resume can parse perfectly and still lose, though. In that first skim a technical recruiter is looking for your current title, your stack, the size of what you worked on, and whether there are numbers. Bullets like "Responsible for backend development" pass any ATS and tell the recruiter nothing.

Get the format out of the way with the template above, then spend your time on the bullets. What technical recruiters look for covers that second half.