Whether you’re a front-end web developer or work across the full stack, you have what it takes to build a great website.
When it comes to landing a job, however, it takes more than just your web development skills to convince hiring managers to invite you for an interview. You must also be great at writing resumes and writing cover letters which can often feel more challenging than debugging a Heisenbug under race conditions.
We know a thing or two when it comes to resume making, and we’ve scoured through tons of developer resumes to distill our wisdom into fifteen free web developer resume samples. We’ve also written a short guide on how to write an effective resume so you can land that crucial first-stage interview in 2025.
Show technical proficiency
- For a seasoned web developer, show off your technical chops and diversity in your projects and you’ll have potential employers sold on your capacity to meet their technological needs.
- Recounting projects that employed a variety of coding languages and development tools (think HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, and Django.js)? That pegs you as the technically versatile forward-thinker companies are dying to snatch up. You can always expound on these projects in your web developer cover letter.
- Backing up the outcomes of your projects with numbers is music to the recruiters’ ears. For example, you could mention when you whipped up web applications with JavaScript frameworks like React.js and Angular,js, yielding a 12% spike in target audience engagement.
Go strong with skills
- How about making your senior web developer resume scream “leader” and “strategist?” It’s all about documenting specific instances when you’ve been at the helm, steering development teams or projects to success.
- Recount when you facilitated a collaborative environment that smashed through tight deadlines without a dent in quality. Better yet, provide a bit of the nitty-gritty ( think the scoop of your project and the impressive results that followed). Not to mention your ability to mitigate issues and mentor junior developers puts some serious muscle behind your application.
- “Led and managed a team of 12 developers and designers to create efficient, effective, and visually stunning websites for 60,000+ clients” perfectly captures the essence of what we’re discussing.
Show potential with projects
- So, your work history isn’t exactly overflowing with web development gigs. It’s understandable to feel a tad nervous about landing that competitive junior position. But it turns out that projects are golden opportunities to showcase your grasp of web development fundamentals in a junior web developer resume.
- Your portfolio could span from college assignments to personal websites, or freelance gigs that stretched your coding muscles. Even better, include instances where you tackled challenging problems and adeptly applied new technologies.
- Perhaps recall a school assignment that involved developing a full-stack web application that mimicked real-world business demands. Or maybe that freelance gig where you integrated API calls to census organizations to fetch data on certain ethnic groups.
Customize a resume objective
- Just because you’re a beginner doesn’t mean padding your entry-level web developer resume with fluff. That will only irk the hiring manager, and you could as well kiss that dream career start goodbye. That space at the top, below the header, could use a resume objective that’s all about the hiring company’s needs.
- Be crystal clear about the position (entry-level web developer) and the company you’re targeting. But more importantly, hint at the pertinent skills (both technical and soft) you’ve picked from internships or school projects and exactly how you intend to contribute.
- Keep your resume objective snappy, though. While you want to avoid a blank space, please aim for two to three sentences.
Capitalize on transferable skills
- Stepping into the web development scene without formal work experience? No sweat. That’s where transferable skills come into play. We’re not talking proficiencies exclusive to a specific job, but the kind you’ve picked up elsewhere and can comfortably slide into web development, whether you’re fresh out of college or changing careers.
- Think about problem-solving, attention to detail, customer service, and the ability to learn quickly. You’ve likely got these in your arsenal if you’ve been in the trenches as a social media manager or a customer service rep. And if you’ve snagged some technical skills along the way? Even better.
- Zooming on the technical side of things, you could, for example, recall building websites with CodePen during your stint as a graphic designer.
Use your coursework
- You’ve got to flip the script to land an internship. Make your application less about your eagerness to learn the ropes and more about your ability to tackle real-world challenges head-on. In this case, your academic feats take precedence.
- A mention of a relevant course you’re undertaking (cue a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Web Development, or Information Technology) is a nice touch to your web developer intern resume. About your chops for cranking out real-world wins, don’t hold back—point out those moments you’ve stretched your technical skills, maybe in academic projects or hackathons.
- Let’s say you were the brains behind a web development blog. Then, zero in on the metrics that matter, including organic traffic, total views, readers attracted, and comments.
Numbers scream potential
- Don’t be that person who just rattles off their past duties. Spice up your application with your achievements, sprinkled with metrics for flavor. It’s about how fabulously you rocked it and the awesome results you can deliver.
- This is not all about percentages, though. Break the monotony with, for instance, the hours you slashed from system downtime, the milliseconds you cut from query response times or the number of updates you managed in Git repositories.
- “…ensuring timely delivery of features and bug fixes with a 93% sprint completion rate” and “Automated repetitive tasks with Visual Studio, saving the team 11 hours every week” are the tangible tidbits that can make your resume pop.
Illustrate resourcefulness
- So, you veered away from the conventional route of becoming a web developer, teaching yourself everything needed. Now, how do you convince a hiring manager that this unique journey of yours has fully equipped you for the open role? It comes down to two things: resourcefulness and portfolio diversity.
- Give a shoutout to those web development online courses and tutorials that have guided you on your journey. Nestled in the sidebar of your self-taught web developer resume, they paint a picture of creative resourcefulness and relentless quest for growth in the evolving field that is web development.
- And to wrap things up with a neat little bow, why not hyperlink to your portfolio showcasing projects taken on through personal ventures or freelance assignments?
Choose the right resume format
- For a web application developer role, there’s little room for error—every detail counts. And one of the vital assets you can use to your advantage is choosing the right resume format.
- It’s all about placement and attention. You need all your strongest assets (think necessary skills, work history, and educational credentials) not just included but strategically positioned to catch the attention of recruiters.
- Brevity is your ally, though. Before you get detail-happy, remember that your web application developer resume should be a tight, engaging summary, not your life story, all kept to one page. Anything more risks losing the hiring manager’s interest and you know what comes next.
Outplay ATS bots
- If you didn’t know, there’s this digital gatekeeper, a sort of robot that sifts through resumes, scanning for certain keywords and formats, all to thin down the crowd of candidates to the cream of the crop. Make sure your J2EE web developer resume has what it takes to slip past these electronic bouncers.
- One of the best ways to optimize your masterpiece for ATS is to use those keywords from the job description, mixing them into your experience, education, certifications, and skills. Plus, that’s another way to customize your resume to speak the language of the hiring company.
- Your template matters, too. Go for something classic and clean, devoid of frills (think tables, charts, and fancy fonts). Then, wrap it all up in a .doc or .docx format since some ATS systems don’t play nicely with PDFs.
Proofread your piece
- You can’t afford to submit a Java web developer peppered with awkward phrases, typos, and punctuation slip-ups. It’s super awkward, and it kinda shouts that you might be a bit sloppy with the details. A thorough once-over is due to ensure your piece is impeccable and shows off your appeal in the best light.
- Take a breather after crafting your resume. When you circle back, read that thing out loud, sentence by sentence, to catch any phrases that just don’t sound right. Punctuation and spelling errors can be sneaky, so why not summon some backup in the form of a spellchecker, like Grammarly?
- A resume checker can spotlight the bits you need to buff up—think metrics, action verbs, and tenure lengths, to resume length. It’s a smart move to get everything in tip-top shape.
Throw in some color
- Why stick to the all-to-common monochromatic theme when a splash of color could show off your flair for design and make your freelance web developer resume pop?
- You see that job title in the header, names of former/current places of work, and the university you attended? Why not give them a hint of sky blue to set them apart from the usual black and white? But remember, less is more—you want to strike the perfect balance that bolsters readability, not distract from the competencies you bring to the table.
Handling multiple career paths
- Recruiters get that job hopping is as regular as clockwork in today’s job market. You’ve got to go above and beyond to have the hiring team sold on your worth. Enter your feats.
- Show off those victories in every role you’ve nailed (even those that seem a bit off the beaten path but equipped you with a few resume skills employers want) without second thoughts—after all, no guts, no glory!
- For inspiration, consider these phrases: “Took 50+ customer orders and processed payments in a timely and cheerful manner during each shift” and “Curated over 50 website changes to increase the user flow.”
Navigating employment gaps
- Career gaps, voluntary or involuntary, are not unheard of. If you’ve got one, don’t duck and cover. Embrace it and offer some context in your resume. That way, you build a bridge of trust with recruiters.
- Trumpet the projects tackled, relevant certifications bagged, and courses completed during those lulls in employment; they illuminate your devotion to growth, which is an admirable quality in every recruiter’s book.
- And when updating that skills section of your resume, it’s wise to make some noise about the new talents you’ve mastered.
Show your career progression
- Seven seconds is how much time you’ve got to wow the hiring manager reading your web developer/programmer resume. Your move? Flip the script and dish out your work history in reverse-chronological format.
- Showcase your latest senior gigs at the top, then stroll past memory lane all the way down to the junior ones (for instance, junior software developer down to college projects). You’re essentially laying out a roadmap of your professional journey for the recruiters to follow.
- Lest you forget, check your resume to ensure each climb packs a punch, with evidence of your game (read, impact) getting stronger.
Related resume guides
Writing Your Web Developer Resume
We don’t mean to state the obvious, but companies are flocking to hire web developers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that demand for these roles will grow by 28 percent over the next eight years (significantly faster than average).
The demand for these roles (and the great salaries) leaves no question about why people pursue web development careers. Not to mention, developers get to solve really cool problems. Who wouldn’t want to do that?
However, with all candidates applying for web developer jobs, how can you demonstrate your technical prowess while highlighting your ability to make a meaningful impact? Frankly, it’s not easy.
We’ve had the distinct pleasure (and, at times, pain) of working directly with hiring managers at companies like Microsoft, Stripe, and Chegg to understand what they’re looking for in web developers. Furthermore, we want to pass along that knowledge to you so you’re no longer in the dark about the hiring process.
In short, here’s what you need to do to maximize your chances of getting a first-round interview:
- Your technical skills need to be written such that they get you past the automated resume filters companies deploy AND satisfy the technical hiring manager who will review your resume.
- Your resume format needs to be right. This is not the place to get creative with images and graphics. Keep it to one page, make it easy to read, and you’ll be fine.
- Quantify the impact of your work and projects. Numbers speak louder than words, and that especially rings true on a resume.
- Customize your resume for each job you apply to.
We know that writing a resume is just about as much fun as moving or going to the dentist. Our goal with BeamJobs is to simplify this process so you can focus on what you love doing, building web applications.
How to highlight your web developer skills
The primary function of the skills section of your resume is to help you get past the automated keyword filters, known as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These systems scan resumes to help hiring managers cut down on time. While they’re useful, they can also weed you out if you’re not careful.
As a web developer, you probably thought that the way to optimize your resume is by including as many keywords as possible. Unfortunately, the technical hiring manager will also review your resume, and a host of keywords isn’t appealing to read.
Nothing is a bigger red flag to someone who hires web developers than a candidate who claims to know 11 different programming languages and 23 different frameworks. As a rule of thumb, if you won’t do well on a whiteboarding session for a given language, don’t include it on your resume.
You don’t want to burn bridges when applying for jobs. The only surefire way to burn a bridge is to outright lie about your qualifications. It’s just not worth it. With programming, there just isn’t much room to “fake it ’till you make it.”
For web developers specifically, it’s much more important to show a depth of understanding in a few languages and frameworks than it is to show breadth in a whole bunch of different things.
It seems like a new JavaScript framework comes out every week, and you would not be expected to be an expert in the flavor of the week by any reasonable employer.
Technical skills for your web developer resume
- Programming languages: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Java, Python
- Frameworks: JavaScript (NodeJS, ReactJS, Angular, jQuery), Ruby (Ruby on Rails), Python (Django)
- Databases: SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite)
- Cloud infrastructure: AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Heroku, DigitalOcean
- Utilities: Git, Unix
Again, you’re not expected to have all of these on your resume. In fact, including all of these skills would reflect poorly on your candidacy. What developer knows every single of these things well enough to be tested on them?
The skills you include on your resume are also a function of the kind of roles you’re applying to. For example, if you’re applying for a front-end web developer role, then your Rails experience likely won’t be as relevant.
Don’t mention your soft skills in your skills section! Companies are not automatically filtering for soft skill keywords, and it’s not convincing to the hiring manager to see you have “communication” as a skill. What does that mean without context?
There are a few ways you can structure how you talk about your skills on your resume.
How to structure your technical skills on your web developer resume
- By proficiency or years of experience
- Advanced: Python (Django), Java, Unix, Git
- Familiar: JavaScript, SQL, HTML/CSS
- By skill type
- Languages: Python, JavaScript, HTML5/CSS
- Frameworks: Django, NodeJS, ReactJS
- Tools: jQuery, Unix, Git, Selenium
- Databases: SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL), AWS
If you’re an entry-level web developer, we recommend you use the “proficiency” skill breakdown because you won’t have a lot of work projects to demonstrate your proficiency in the skills you have.
Get your web developer resume format right
The formatting of your resume is pretty straightforward. The goal: keep it simple, and keep it easy to read. Here are the things you need to do to properly format your web developer resume:
- Keep it to one page. It’s hard, but this is absolutely what you should aim for.
- If you brain dump on a resume outline, you can make that document as long as you please.
- In your resume header, list your current city (you don’t need your specific address).
- Under your name, include the title of the role you want. So if you’re applying for a senior web developer job, make that your title.
- Most likely, you do not need a resume objective or summary. Unless you’re an entry-level or senior candidate, omit this section.
- If you’re entry-level, include relevant classes you took in school that make you a good fit for the web developer job you’re applying to.
- Include any relevant demonstrations of your ability as a developer. Adding links like your GitHub profile or your personal portfolio site can encourage hiring managers to look you up and see your skills.
- Do not have any typos or grammar errors on your resume!
Most of these tips are self-explanatory, but we’ll elaborate on a few just to make sure the points are clear.
To keep you on your toes, let’s talk about the last bullet point first. For any given web developer role (and this goes double for junior web developer roles), the hiring manager is reviewing, on average, over 60 resumes.
This means they’re essentially looking for a reason to say “no” to a given person instead of “yes” because they only have so much time to dedicate to resume review. Don’t let a silly grammar error or spelling mistake be the reason you get put in the “no” pile.
Read your resume, then read it again. Then read it five more times. Then send it to your mom/friend/brother/cousin/colleague/whomever to make sure another human catches basic mistakes that a machine can’t catch.
Education for an entry-level web developer vs. an experienced web developer
You want to try to keep your resume to one page. We know that’s a tough pill to swallow since you want to include all your qualifications to help you get the job.
Sadly, hiring managers are busy, and they can’t spend as much time as they’d like reviewing all resumes they get for a given role. For that reason, your resume needs to be a one-page highlight reel.
Once you get an interview, you can spend more time expounding on your past experience and skills. Until then, keep your resume short. You’re more than your one-page resume, but you can’t overwhelm hiring managers at the start.
That one page of information will likely differ between candidates with more or less experience. A senior-level developer can’t afford to waste much space on their education section. Conversely, an entry-level web developer needs to convince the hiring manager they have the right skills and knowledge, so they might include relevant courses and their GPA.
Entry-level vs. experienced web developer education on resume
Entry-level web developers
- Include all relevant programming or math classes you took in school to highlight your qualifications
- Include your GPA if it’s above ~3.2
- If you just finished a software engineering boot camp, include it in your education section
Senior web developers
- Don’t waste space on classes you took in school. Use this to focus on the projects you worked on in your jobs.
- Don’t include your GPA. It will have very little sway after you already have a few years of experience under your belt.
- Consider a resume summary, but only if you’re going to take the time to do it right (see our notes about the objective below).
Don’t include a resume objective
Most resume objectives we’ve seen from web developers should never be included in their resumes. What makes them so bad?
Picture this: you’re reading a resume, and the very first line says “I am a hard-working web developer looking to grow my skills.” It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. Would you hire someone based on that line?
Probably not.
A resume objective should be a two-to-three-sentence sales pitch explaining your experience, skills, and passion for the job. Most of the time, you don’t even need to include it!
There are two cases where it’s best to a resume objective:
- You’re undergoing a career change
- You have a particular interest or passion in the company or role you’re applying to
- If you’re not customizing your objective for each job you’re applying to, then you’re better off not including a resume objective
Remember, real estate is valuable on a one-page resume. Don’t waste it by saying something that doesn’t improve your chances of getting an interview. To illustrate the point, here are a few resume objective examples.
WRONG – this resume objective doesn’t say anything new or valuable
Looking to utilize my skills as a front-end web developer to improve and iterate on the product for a customer-first organization.
RIGHT – specific, demonstrated interest in the company mission
As the daughter of small business owners, I’m really excited about the prospect of using my full-stack Python experience to further the Stripe mission of making payments accessible for companies of all sizes across the globe.
Quantify your impact on your resume
Numbers speak louder than words. While there is no way to directly quantify the work of a web developer (and no, lines of code written do not count as a metric), you can try to quantify the impact of the projects you’ve worked on.
Whenever possible, include the tangible outcome of your projects. This doesn’t always have to mean that you’ve impacted revenue in some way. Here are some other ways that your work may have had an impact (and this is not all-encompassing, get creative):
Ways to quantify the impact of your work as a web developer
- Reduced downtime by X%
- Improved the speed of the application by X%
- Implemented a product feature that improved customer retention by X%
- Improved customer satisfaction (as measured by NPS) by X%
- Built a feature that improved click-through rate by X%
- Scaled a product that successfully handled X concurrent users
- Automated a process that saved X hours of manual labor each week
- Improved a product feature that increased usage by X%
- Worked on a project that led to a cost savings of $X
- Implemented unit tests that improved test coverage by X%
- Fixed a bug that reduced customer complaints by X%
It’s okay if these impacts are rough estimates. As long as you can justify your metrics in an interview setting, go for it! Back-of-the-envelope math is totally acceptable here.
When a hiring manager is reviewing your resume, you want to make the case that you deserve an interview no matter where they focus their attention on your resume. To do that, you need to convince them that you will have a meaningful impact on their business.
After all, companies hire developers (and anyone, really) to have an appreciable impact on the business. What better way to demonstrate you can do this as a developer than showing you’ve had a huge impact in all of your past roles?
To hammer this home one more time, consider these two examples. They’re talking about the same work experience, and the only difference is that one candidate made their impact explicit numerically. Who would you hire?
WRONG – work experience not tied to outcomes
EdTech Company
January 2015 – Present, New York NY
Senior Web Developer
- Worked alongside product managers to re-architect a multi-page web app into a single page web-app built in React
- Built the logic for a streamlined ad-serving platform that scaled to our 100M users
RIGHT – work tied to specific business impact
EdTech Company
January 2015 – Present, New York NY
Senior Web Developer
- Worked alongside product managers to re-architect a multi-page web app into a single-page web app built in React resulting in a yearly revenue lift of $1.1M
- Built the logic for a streamlined ad-serving platform that scaled to our 100M users which improved the page speed by 14% after implementation
Project ideas for entry-level web developers
If you’re an entry-level web developer (or fresher as the cool kids call it) then you won’t have any experience to talk about on your resume.
In this case, it’s essential that you include projects you’ve worked on to demonstrate to the hiring manager that you have the ability to function as an effective web developer on their team. More than that, you also want to show you have a genuine interest in web development. You might be interested in choosing our Student Google Docs resume template we created that specifically makes room for projects.
The beauty of being a web developer is that you have the ability to create any website that you want! To be frank, if you’re a junior web developer and you don’t have any projects you’ve worked on, you likely won’t get the job.
How can you come up with projects to work on? Here are a few ideas:
Web developer projects for your resume
- Dive deep into a hobby of yours
- Example: Created a web app to track how the food I consume the night before a run impacts my performance
- Solve your own problem
- Example: Built a recommendation engine to automatically recommend what movie I should watch next, reducing my average time spent selecting movies by 18 minutes
- Built a tool for somebody else
- Example: Built an application for my local newspaper delivery person using the Google Maps API to help them optimize their route
- No reason at all
- Example: Built a Recaptcha test that was impossible for humans to solve so that websites could allow only bot traffic through
- Social good
- Example: Built a robust toy and food inventory management system for my local humane shelter that saved them 15 hours a month in manual data entry and ordering
As you can see, there are many types of projects you can include on your web developer resume.
If you already have projects to include, the same rules hold as if you were talking about your work experience. Try to quantify the impact of the project you worked on against your original goal! For example, for the nonsense Recaptcha test example listed above, you can state the rate that humans failed your test.
When it’s all put together, here’s what a project might look like on an entry-level web developer resume:
Poker Simulation
- Built a full-stack web app to allow users to simulate and visualize outcomes of poker hands against opponents of different play styles using open-source cards.js on the front-end
- Utilized sci-kit learn in Python to simulate possible outcomes under different scenarios that the user chose
- Used: JavaScript, Python, SQL, HTML/CSS
How to effectively customize your resume for each job
We know, we know. Customizing your resume for each job is a pain. However, it’s one of the best things you can do to get the job. You need to customize your resume for each job whenever you can.
This is not to say you have to customize your resume if there is truly nothing unique you can say about your fit for a given role or company.
Instead, take this approach:
- Read over the web developer job description thoroughly. As you read it, do any specific projects you’ve worked on come to mind?
- For example, if the job description mentions something about web scraping and you’ve used Selenium you can mention that if it’s not already on your resume.
- Go to the company website. As you learn about the company and its products, does anything jump to mind?
- For example, if you’re looking at a web developer role for a finance company and in a past role you helped your team manage the budget, you can talk about that.
- If you have a specific interest in the mission of the company, craft a resume objective that talks to that interest (see above).
You shouldn’t spend too much time on this. If you’re a full-stack developer and you’re applying for a front-end role, then you should talk more about your experience on the front-end on your resume.
This step is the most intuitive. If there’s any connection that you have (no matter how tenuous) to the company or role you’re applying for, adjust your resume to talk about that connection.
Web Developer Resume FAQs
Forgo adding soft skills, like communication, to your web developer resume; you need to quickly make the case for your technical skillset. What programming languages does the job description talk about? JavaScript and Java are two different animals, after all! Think about not only the needs of the specific company but also what your true skills are. If a company works in DigitalOcean but you’ve only dabbled there, it’s probably best to leave that skill off your list.
Alternatively, you can also organize your skills list by level of proficiency. Using the example above, you could list DigitalOcean as a skill you’re familiar with while listing things like Django, Java, and AWS as advanced skills.
Numbers speak louder than words. Especially in technical roles like web development, metrics like percentages, money, and estimated totals add considerable weight to your job description bullet points. Rather than talk about mere job responsibilities in your work experience, tell employers about your accomplishments. If you improved the speed of an application by using a CDN and reducing the number of HTTP requests, how much did you improve the speed? And if you built a feature that increased the CTR, how much did the CTR increase? Even if you can only share guesstimates, you’re still providing proof of meaningful impact.
Projects are your best friend next to internships in web development. There’s a lot of competition out there for web developers, so while employers understand that you’ve got to gain real-world experience at some point, they also expect you to come to the table with evidence that you’re ready to rise to the challenge. Internships are a great way to gain valuable experience and skills while getting your foot in the door. Projects are also a highly valuable inclusion on your resume that a lot of candidates never consider adding.
Projects can be more personal in nature, or they can be an academic task or even a volunteer endeavor for a community, company, or friend. The point is that you can point to specific projects where you used web development skills that you’ll need on the job. For example, if running is your hobby, creating an app to track how your food intake impacts your performance is a project that demonstrates not only web development skills but also initiative and creativity.
