May 2026 · 7 min read

How to write a software engineer CV for UK jobs in 2026

Software engineering CVs have specific requirements that differ from most professional CVs — GitHub profiles, technical skills depth, and project evidence all matter more than in other fields.

The software engineer CV structure

For software engineers, the CV should lead with technical skills — not because personality doesn't matter, but because it's the primary filter at screening stage. Structure: personal statement → technical skills → work experience → projects → education. Reverse this only if your education is genuinely exceptional (first-class CS degree from a top university for a graduate role).

Technical skills section for developers

How to present your GitHub and projects

Include your GitHub URL in your personal details section. Make sure your pinned repositories are your best work — clean code, proper README files, and ideally some evidence of real users or usage. If you've contributed to open source projects with meaningful contributions (not just typo fixes), mention the most significant ones.

For personal projects in your CV, include: what it does, the tech stack, scale (users, data volume, requests per second), and a link. "Built a personal finance tracking app using React and Node.js, serving 200+ active users" is much stronger than "Built a personal finance tracking app."

Work experience: demonstrating engineering impact

The best software engineer CVs quantify engineering impact: "Reduced API response time by 60% through query optimisation and caching layer implementation, improving checkout completion rate by 4%." Not: "Improved backend performance." Think about your work in terms of: latency, throughput, reliability, developer productivity, and business outcome. If you can connect your technical work to a business metric, always do so.