One-page software engineer resume template

Yes, for most engineers. Students, new grads and engineers with up to roughly 10 years of experience can almost always fit their best evidence on one page, and the page is easier to skim because of it. Laszlo Bock, who ran people operations at Google, put the rule of thumb as one page of resume for every 10 years of work experience (The Muse).

Two pages make sense when one page would force you to drop evidence of your level: a promotion path, cross-team technical leadership, or several roles that each matter for the job. That is usually a senior or staff engineer question, and it is covered at the end of this page.

If you want the long version of the length debate, read how long should a software engineer resume be. This page is about building the one-page version.

A made-up mid-level backend engineer with about 6 years of full-time experience. Copy the shape and the choices, and use your own numbers. Notice what is missing: no summary, no projects section, no coursework, and the internship is one line.

Why it fits on one page:

• The current job gets 4 bullets, the previous job 2, the internship none.
• Every bullet is one or two lines, and none ends with a single orphaned word on its own line.
• Skills are two grouped lines instead of a grid of 30 logos.
• Projects were cut because the job history already proves the backend work.

The same layout is available as Jake's Resume in LaTeX, or as Google Docs and Word templates.

Treat these as defaults. If you are 10 years in and one page still shows your level, keep one page. Our senior software engineer resume guide shows both versions.

On US Letter with 0.5 to 0.75 inch margins and 10 to 11pt body text, you get roughly 50 to 60 lines before section spacing. That is a rough planning number from the page math. A typical budget for an engineer with a few years of experience:

If your draft is over budget, the overflow is almost always in Experience bullets that wrap to a third line or in a projects section that repeats your job.

Put the section that carries the hiring decision right under the header. For working engineers that is Experience. The order that works for most people:

• Working engineer: Header, Experience, Skills, Education. Add Projects after Experience if needed.
• New grad or intern: Header, Education, Experience, Projects, Skills.
• Career changer or self-taught: Header, Projects, Experience, Skills, Education.

Keep it single column. A sidebar looks like it saves space, but the narrow column wraps every skill and title, and columns carry parsing risk. The ATS-friendly template guide explains why.

• Your last two or three roles, with bullets that say what you built, what it ran on, and what changed because of it.
• Numbers you can explain: traffic, latency, cost, deploy time, users, error rates, team size.
• A grouped skills section with the technologies the job asks for that you have actually used.
• Projects, only when they show a language, domain or level of ownership your jobs don't.
• Education in one line once you have a full-time job.
• Links to GitHub or a portfolio if there is something worth clicking.

Test each line with one question: would a hiring manager for this job miss it if it were gone? If not, it is using space a better bullet could have.

Cut in this order, and check the length after each step. Most engineers are back on one page by step four.

1. Bullets with a few words on their last line. Rewrite them to end a line earlier. This often frees 4 to 6 lines with no lost content.
2. The summary or objective. Unless you are changing careers, a two-line summary rarely says more than your current title and first bullet.
3. Duties instead of results. "Participated in code reviews" and "Worked in an Agile team" describe every engineer.
4. Old roles. Anything more than about 8 to 10 years back becomes title, company and dates on one line.
5. Projects that repeat your job. A to-do app in React adds nothing if you already ship React at work.
6. Long skill lists. Drop what every engineer has (Git, VS Code, Jira) and what you couldn't discuss in an interview.
7. Coursework, GPA, hobbies, references. Keep GPA only as a recent grad with a strong one.

Shorter bullets come from cutting filler words and leading with the result. Keep the numbers.

Phrases to delete on sight: "was responsible for", "helped to", "worked on", "various", "in order to", "successfully". More rewrites are in software engineer resume bullet points.

Not as small as you are tempted to make them. Reasonable floors for a one-page resume:

• Body text at 10pt or larger. The Tech Interview Handbook gives 10pt as the minimum with standard fonts like Arial, Calibri or Garamond.
• Margins around 0.5 inch at the smallest, and no content pushed into the header or footer to gain space.
• Visible space between sections and between jobs, so the eye can find each role.

If you need 9pt text and 0.3 inch margins to fit, the resume has a content problem. A crowded page also works against you in the first skim: Ladders' 2018 eye-tracking study found cluttered layouts with little white space lost recruiters' attention (HR Dive). Go back to the cut list instead.

Use two pages when you have done the cuts above and one page still hides something that sets your level. Common cases:

• Staff or principal engineers whose recent roles each include cross-team architecture work.
• Engineers moving into management who need room for both technical and people leadership.
• Researchers or ML engineers with publications or patents the job asks about.
• Consultants or contractors whose separate engagements are each relevant.

If you go to two pages, page one still has to stand alone: the current role and your strongest results go there, and page two holds older roles and supporting detail. Never let a half page of filler be the reason you have a second page.