Tech hiring runs on skills, not job titles. A hiring manager scanning your CV wants to know, within the first ten seconds, whether your stack overlaps with theirs and whether you've actually shipped something with it. Everything else on the page is secondary to that.
This is why a CV built for, say, a marketing or operations role tends to fall flat when it's repurposed for a developer or engineer application. The format needs to front-load technical specifics rather than build up to them.
Lead with a tech stack summary
Directly under your contact details, add a short, organised block listing your core languages, frameworks, and tools — grouped sensibly (languages, frameworks, cloud/infra, databases) rather than dumped in one long line. This single section does more ATS keyword matching and human skim-reading work than any other part of the CV.
- Group by category so it's scannable, not a wall of comma-separated terms
- Order roughly by strength or relevance to the role you're applying for
- Match the terminology in the job description — "React" and "React.js" can behave differently in ATS keyword parsing
Describe roles and projects by what you built, not what you attended
"Involved in the development of a customer portal" tells a hiring manager almost nothing. "Built the payments flow for a customer portal handling 40,000+ monthly transactions, using Node.js and Stripe" tells them everything they need in one line. Every bullet should answer: what did you build, with what, and what was the measurable or observable result?
Where you can, quantify impact — load times reduced, deployment frequency increased, bugs closed, uptime improved, team size, users served. Numbers cut through in a way that adjectives never do.
Keep project descriptions readable to a non-engineer too
Your CV often passes through a recruiter or HR screener before it reaches an engineering manager. That doesn't mean dumbing anything down — it means leading each bullet with the outcome, then the technical detail, so a non-specialist reader still understands why it mattered even if they don't follow every term.
Don't skip the basics because the tech is the interesting part
A cluttered layout, inconsistent formatting, or a CV that doesn't survive being parsed by an ATS will sink a strong technical background just as fast as a weak one. The fundamentals covered in our guide to UK CV format — clean structure, reverse-chronological order, no tables or text boxes — apply just as much here.
A common mistake
Listing every technology you've ever encountered, rather than the ones you can actually use with confidence, is one of the fastest ways to derail a technical interview. If it's on the CV, be ready to talk about it in depth.
LinkedIn matters more in tech than most sectors
Tech recruiters source heavily on LinkedIn, often more than they trawl job boards. A profile that's out of date or thin undercuts an otherwise strong CV. If yours needs work, our piece on getting noticed by recruiters on LinkedIn covers the specifics.
Frequently asked questions
Should I list every programming language or tool I've ever touched?
No — list what you can actually work with confidently and what's relevant to the roles you're targeting. A long, undifferentiated list of technologies reads as padding and invites a technical interviewer to test you on the weakest one on the list.
Do I need a GitHub link or portfolio?
It's not mandatory, but it's one of the highest-value additions you can make if you have work worth showing — even two or three well-documented projects beat a bare list of skills. Make sure whatever you link to is current and actually reflects your best work, not an abandoned repo from a bootcamp exercise.
How do I write a tech CV with no professional experience yet?
Lead with projects — personal, academic, open-source, or freelance — and describe them the same way you'd describe a job: what you built, what stack you used, and what the outcome or challenge was. A well-documented side project often demonstrates more than a vague first-job description would anyway.
Should I include certifications?
Relevant ones, yes — cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP), security certifications, or vendor-specific credentials can carry real weight, especially early career. Skip anything outdated or tangential; a shelf of unrelated certificates dilutes the ones that matter.
Let a specialist build your tech CV
We tailor every CV to the stack and seniority you're targeting — no generic templates.
Get Started