Why the verb you choose changes everything
Two engineers. Same project. Same outcome. One writes "Worked on the API migration." The other writes "Architected and led the API migration, reducing latency by 40% across 12 downstream services." The second bullet scores dramatically higher in ATS systems and holds a recruiter's attention.
The difference is the verb.
"Worked on" signals participation. "Architected" signals ownership. ATS systems weight strong action verbs more heavily because they correlate with higher seniority and more concrete accomplishments. Recruiters spend 7 seconds scanning a resume — strong verbs in the first two words of each bullet are what they notice.
Here are the action verbs that actually work for software engineers, organized by what you did.
When you built or shipped something
These are your highest-frequency bullets. Use specific, technical verbs:
- Architected — for system-level decisions you owned
- Engineered — for technically complex builds
- Developed — solid default for feature work
- Built — clear, direct, works at any level
- Implemented — for features or integrations you executed
- Shipped — signals production-ready work, startup-friendly
- Launched — for products or features that reached users
- Deployed — specifically for infrastructure and release work
- Designed — for API contracts, data models, system designs
- Prototyped — for early-stage or exploratory work
Example: "Architected a multi-tenant caching layer using Redis that reduced database load by 60% at 50,000 concurrent users."
When you improved something that already existed
- Optimized — for performance, speed, cost improvements
- Refactored — for code quality and maintainability work
- Migrated — for moving between systems, frameworks, or platforms
- Rearchitected — for significant structural changes
- Modernized — for legacy system upgrades
- Reduced — when the point is the decrease (latency, cost, error rate)
- Increased — when the point is the increase (coverage, throughput, score)
- Improved — general-purpose, best when paired with a metric
- Eliminated — for removing technical debt or failure modes
- Automated — for replacing manual processes
Example: "Refactored the authentication service from monolith to microservice, reducing deployment time from 45 minutes to 8 minutes."
When you led or owned something
- Led — for technical or team leadership
- Owned — for end-to-end accountability of a system or feature
- Spearheaded — for initiatives you initiated and drove
- Drove — for outcomes you were responsible for
- Directed — for project-level coordination
- Championed — for advocating and pushing through technical decisions
- Defined — for creating standards, interfaces, or contracts
- Established — for processes or systems that didn't exist before
- Oversaw — for supervision with accountability
Example: "Led a team of 4 engineers to deliver a real-time notification system, shipped 2 weeks ahead of schedule with zero post-launch incidents."
When you solved a problem or fixed something
- Resolved — for debugging, incidents, or blockers
- Debugged — for specific technical problem-solving
- Diagnosed — for root cause analysis
- Identified — for finding problems before they became incidents
- Prevented — for proactive fixes
- Remediated — used in security and reliability contexts
- Stabilized — for reliability improvements after instability
Example: "Diagnosed a memory leak in the payments service causing 3% transaction failures; resolved within 4 hours, restoring 99.98% uptime."
When you collaborated or contributed
- Collaborated — cross-team work
- Partnered — implies co-ownership with another team
- Coordinated — for logistics-heavy cross-team efforts
- Contributed — for open-source or team project work
- Advised — for technical consultation without direct ownership
- Mentored — for developing junior engineers
- Reviewed — for code review and technical oversight
Example: "Partnered with the data team to define the event schema for a new analytics pipeline, unblocking 3 downstream ML models."
When you analyzed or researched
- Analyzed — for data-driven investigation
- Evaluated — for comparing options (tools, vendors, approaches)
- Assessed — for technical audits or reviews
- Benchmarked — for performance comparison work
- Researched — for feasibility studies or technical exploration
- Investigated — for incident post-mortems or root cause analysis
Example: "Evaluated 4 message queue solutions (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, Pub/Sub); recommended Kafka based on throughput benchmarks and team expertise, saving 3 months of migration risk."
When you presented, documented, or trained
- Presented — for technical talks or stakeholder updates
- Documented — for technical writing, runbooks, or specs
- Trained — for onboarding or upskilling others
- Authored — for formal specs, RFCs, or design documents
- Standardized — for establishing consistent practices across a team
Example: "Authored the internal RFC for the team's API versioning strategy, adopted across 8 services."
Verbs to stop using immediately
These verbs appear on millions of resumes and add zero signal. Replace every one of them:
- Worked on → replace with what you specifically did (built, implemented, debugged)
- Helped → replace with your actual contribution (collaborated on, contributed to)
- Assisted → same problem as "helped" — too passive
- Was responsible for → just say what you did. "Led" or "Owned" is half the words and twice the impact
- Participated in → what specifically did you do? That's the verb you want
- Handled → vague. Managed? Resolved? Owned? Pick the right one
- Utilized → use "used" if you mean used, or a better verb if you mean something more specific
The formula: Verb + What + Result
Every strong resume bullet follows the same structure:
[Strong verb] + [what you built/did] + [the result with a metric]
If you can't fill in all three, start with the verb and what you built — you can always add the metric when you remember or look it up. But start with a strong verb. It sets the tone for the entire bullet.
One more thing: keywords and verbs work together
Your action verbs improve how a recruiter reads your resume. But the nouns — the technologies, frameworks, and methodologies — are what the ATS scores. "Architected a distributed system" is a strong bullet. "Architected a distributed system using Kafka, Go, and Kubernetes, processing 2M events/day" is a strong bullet that also scores for three high-value keywords.
Use Applyr's free ATS checker to see your keyword score against any job description. Strong verbs get you past the recruiter's scan. The right keywords get you past the ATS filter first.
→ Check your ATS keyword score free at Applyr
See which keywords you're missing before you apply — takes 8 seconds.