How many programming languages should a software engineer CV list?

List the ones you could be interviewed on, usually three to six. Each main language should also appear in a job entry that shows what you built with it.

Should I include personal projects on a software engineer CV?

Yes, when they show a skill your jobs do not, or when you have little professional experience. Describe them like work: what it does, what you used and any real usage.

Do I need a separate CV for each software engineer application?

You do not need a new CV, but adjust the summary and the order of bullets so the posting's main requirements are visible in the first third of the page.

Engineering

Software Engineer CV: what gets you shortlisted

Software engineer postings are broad, so screeners rely on specifics to tell candidates apart: which languages you shipped in, what the systems did, how big they were and what changed because of your work. A CV that lists technologies without tying them to outcomes reads the same as hundreds of others.

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What employers look for in a Software Engineer CV

Screeners check these first. Each one should be visible in your job entries, not only in a skills list.

Production experience in the languages the posting names, shown inside job entries rather than only in a skills list.
Ownership of something end to end: a feature, a service or a migration you drove from design to release.
Evidence of engineering quality, such as tests you wrote, code review, incident follow-ups or performance work.
Scale and context: users served, request volume, data size or team size, so the reader can judge difficulty.
Collaboration with product, design or other teams, described through what you delivered together.

Skills Software Engineer postings often ask for

Listing a skill is not the same as showing it. Resymetry counts a skill as matched only where your CV shows you used it.

Python
Java
TypeScript
Go
SQL
REST APIs
Git
CI/CD
Docker
AWS
Unit testing
System design

4 common Software Engineer CV mistakes and how to fix them

A skills section with 30 technologies and job entries that never mention them.
Fix: Keep the skills list short and make sure every core language appears in at least one achievement.
Bullets that describe duties: "Worked on the payments service."
Fix: Say what you changed and what it did: the feature, the result and the scale.
No sign of how large or hard the work was.
Fix: Add one number per role where you honestly have one: users, requests, latency, cost or team size.
Side projects listed above paid experience for mid-level applications.
Fix: Lead with professional work. Keep projects for skills your jobs do not show.

Weak and strong CV bullets

Illustrative examples, not real candidates. Use your own work and only numbers you can back up.

Weak: Responsible for backend development.
Stronger: Built the order-history API in Go serving the mobile app, cutting p95 response time from 900 ms to 250 ms.
Weak: Used Docker and CI/CD.
Stronger: Containerised four services and moved them to a GitHub Actions pipeline, shortening releases from weekly to daily.
Weak: Helped improve code quality.
Stronger: Introduced integration tests for the checkout flow, which caught two regressions before release in the first month.

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