The best resume format for software engineers

Chronological, functional or hybrid?

Use reverse chronological: your most recent role first, with dates. It's what technical recruiters expect and what applicant tracking systems parse most reliably. Functional resumes, which group skills and hide the timeline, are read as an attempt to hide something. A hybrid (a strong skills section above a chronological history) is what most good developer resumes already are.

Section order for a developer resume

Some engineers put skills at the bottom; that's fine too. What matters is that a recruiter finds your stack and your most recent work within a few seconds.

Best font and font size for a resume

• Sans-serif: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Inter, Lato. Clean and safe everywhere.
• Serif: Garamond, Georgia, Cambria, Times New Roman, Computer Modern (Jake's template). Slightly more traditional and compact.
• Body text: 10 to 11pt. Below 10pt gets hard to read on paper and screens.
• Section headings: 12 to 14pt, bold or small caps.
• Your name: 18 to 24pt.
• Use one font family, two at most. Avoid novelty or script fonts.

Margins, spacing and layout

• Margins of 0.5 to 1 inch on all sides. Jake's template sits at about 0.5 to 0.6.
• Single column. Two-column layouts can be read out of order by parsers.
• Dates right-aligned with a tab stop, not a table or text box.
• No headers or footers for contact details; some parsers skip them.
• No photos, icons standing in for words, or skill-level bars.

PDF or Word?

Send a text-based PDF by default. It keeps the layout identical everywhere, and modern applicant tracking systems read it fine. Send DOCX only when the posting or recruiter asks. Avoid PDFs exported as images (common from some design tools): there's no text in them for an ATS to read. To check, open the PDF and try to select a line of text.

Format checklist

1. One page (see how long a resume should be).
2. Reverse chronological, every role and school dated.
3. Standard headings: Experience, Projects, Education, Skills.
4. Body text 10 to 11pt, margins at least 0.5in.
5. Single column, no tables or text boxes for layout.
6. Text-based PDF that copies out in reading order.
7. File name like firstname-lastname-resume.pdf.

ResumeForDev handles all of this automatically: it uses one fixed engineering layout (a port of Jake's resume), auto-fits it to one Letter page and exports a text-based PDF.