The best examples of performance review examples for software developers (that actually help people grow)

Project-based examples of performance review examples for software developers

Let’s start where managers actually get stuck: the wording. These project-based scenarios give you concrete examples of performance review examples for software developers at different levels and performance bands.

Each example is written in manager voice, focused on a specific project or time period, and can be dropped into your review tool with light editing.

1. Backend feature delivery – exceeds expectations

Context: Mid-level backend developer leading an API redesign project.

“Over the last two quarters, you led the redesign of our billing API, reducing average response time by 40% and cutting timeout errors by 60%. You broke the work into clear milestones, communicated tradeoffs early, and consistently delivered ahead of agreed timelines. Your pull requests were small, well-documented, and required minimal review cycles. Other teams called out that integration with your new endpoints was straightforward because of your clear API contracts and example payloads. This project is a strong example of you operating at a senior level in both technical execution and ownership.”

Why this works: It ties performance to measurable outcomes (latency, errors, timelines) and highlights behaviors (small PRs, communication) rather than fuzzy traits like “hard-working.” This is one of the best examples of performance review examples for software developers who are on the cusp of promotion.

2. Frontend quality and UX collaboration – meets expectations

Context: Frontend developer on a customer-facing redesign.

“During the Q3 dashboard redesign, you implemented the new layouts and chart components according to spec and collaborated closely with Design to resolve ambiguity. You consistently asked clarifying questions instead of guessing, which reduced rework in later sprints. While there were a few minor visual bugs reported after launch, you triaged and fixed them within 24 hours, and you added regression tests to prevent similar issues. Your work met expectations for your level, and your responsiveness to feedback helped the team hit the release date.”

This example of a performance review balances acknowledgment of issues with clear recognition of solid, reliable delivery.

3. Senior engineer leadership on a migration – exceeds expectations

Context: Senior engineer leading a cloud migration and cross-team effort.

“You led the first phase of our move from on-prem infrastructure to AWS, coordinating work across four squads. You created a clear migration plan with milestones, dependencies, and rollback strategies, which reduced uncertainty for partner teams. When we hit unexpected cost spikes in staging, you quickly analyzed CloudWatch metrics, identified inefficient queries, and proposed optimizations that lowered projected production spend by ~25%. You also ran weekly office hours that unblocked other teams and documented best practices in our internal wiki. This project is a standout example of senior-level impact and cross-team leadership.”

Note how this performance review example anchors leadership feedback in a concrete project instead of abstract “influence.”

4. Code quality and reliability – needs improvement

Context: Developer shipping features quickly, but with recurring production issues.

“You delivered several high-impact features this half, including the new notifications settings and export functionality. However, both features required multiple hotfixes within the first week of release due to issues that could have been caught with more thorough testing and edge-case handling. For example, the export feature did not handle large datasets gracefully, leading to timeouts for several enterprise customers. Going forward, I’d like to see you invest more time in test coverage, negative-path testing, and load testing where appropriate. Pairing with QA and using feature flags for risky changes will help you maintain your speed while improving reliability.”

This is one of the more realistic examples of performance review examples for software developers who are strong executors but need to slow down just enough to protect quality.

5. Collaboration and communication in a distributed team – mixed performance

Context: Remote engineer working across time zones.

“You consistently deliver your assigned tickets and provide thoughtful feedback in code reviews. Teammates value your technical depth, especially on our authentication stack. At the same time, several people have shared that it’s difficult to get timely responses from you in Slack or during incident triage, particularly outside your core hours. In a distributed team, proactive communication is critical to avoid blocking others. Over the next cycle, I’d like you to align on clearer response-time expectations, use status updates on in-progress work, and over-communicate when you’re blocked or stepping away. This will help the team plan more effectively and reduce last-minute surprises.”

Here, the review surfaces a real collaboration issue without attacking personality. It’s specific, actionable, and grounded in how distributed engineering teams work in 2024–2025.

6. Early-career developer growth – progressing toward expectations

Context: Junior developer in their first year.

“In your first year, you’ve moved from mostly observing to contributing independently to production code. You successfully implemented several small but important improvements, such as fixing validation bugs in the signup flow and adding analytics tracking to key events. You ask good questions during planning and you’re open to feedback in code reviews. To reach full proficiency for your level, you’ll need to reduce the amount of rework due to missed requirements and improve your ability to break down tasks into smaller, testable pieces. Let’s focus next quarter on owning slightly larger tickets end-to-end, from clarifying requirements to writing tests and monitoring after release.”

This example of a performance review for a junior engineer emphasizes trajectory and next steps instead of just listing what happened.

7. Staff-level impact and technical strategy – exceeds expectations

Context: Staff engineer driving long-term platform strategy.

“You’ve significantly raised the bar for technical strategy on our platform. Your proposal to consolidate our three separate job schedulers into a single, resilient service reduced operational incidents by 35% and simplified our on-call rotations. You didn’t just design the system; you also aligned stakeholders across Product, Data, and SRE, incorporated their feedback, and created a migration path that minimized customer risk. Your design docs are now used as reference examples in onboarding. This is one of the best examples of performance review examples for software developers at the staff level because it shows sustained, multi-quarter impact rather than one-off heroics.”

Here, the language reflects seniority: less about individual tickets, more about systems, stakeholders, and long-term outcomes.

8. Underperformance with clear path forward – needs significant improvement

Context: Developer consistently missing deadlines and struggling with code quality.

“Over the last two quarters, several of your projects have missed agreed timelines, including the profile settings revamp and the internal admin tools update. In both cases, the initial estimates did not account for integration complexity, and there were repeated issues identified in code review around error handling and security best practices. These patterns are below expectations for your level. On the positive side, when given focused support, such as pair programming sessions, you’ve been able to deliver higher-quality work. Over the next three months, we’ll work together on a development plan focused on estimation skills, secure coding practices, and more frequent check-ins. Meeting the goals in that plan will be necessary to return to a meets-expectations level of performance.”

This is one of the harder but necessary examples of performance review examples for software developers who are at risk. It combines directness with a concrete improvement path.

How to write your own examples of performance review examples for software developers

Copy-paste is tempting, but your best reviews will sound like you, not a template. Still, the patterns in these real examples can guide you.

Anchor feedback in specific projects and outcomes

The strongest examples include:

• A defined time frame or project name
• Clear outcomes: performance improvements, bug rates, incident counts, customer impact, or business metrics
• Behaviors you want more or less of: communication style, documentation, testing approach, mentorship

For instance, instead of writing, “You improved system reliability,” write something closer to: “Your work on retry logic and circuit breakers cut payment-related incidents from 8 per month to 2, and you documented the patterns so other teams could adopt them.”

This project-based approach aligns with what industrial-organizational psychology research has found about effective performance feedback: specific, behavior-focused feedback drives better performance than vague trait-based comments. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management summarizes this in its guidance on performance management, emphasizing observable behaviors and results over personality judgments (opm.gov).

Balance strengths, gaps, and next steps

The best examples of performance review examples for software developers follow a simple structure:

• What worked well (with concrete examples)
• What needs to change (again, anchored in reality)
• What happens next (goals, support, timeline)

This mirrors evidence-based feedback models like “Situation–Behavior–Impact,” which are widely taught in management programs at universities such as Harvard (hks.harvard.edu). Even if you don’t use the formal labels, the idea is the same: describe the situation, the behavior, and the impact before you jump to evaluation.

Reflect 2024–2025 realities: remote work, AI tools, and security

Modern performance reviews for engineers can’t ignore how the job has shifted:

• Remote and hybrid work: Communication, documentation, and async collaboration matter more than ever. Reviews should mention how well developers use tools like Slack, docs, and issue trackers.
• AI-assisted coding: Tools such as GitHub Copilot or similar assistants can boost output but also create new risks. Good reviews focus on how developers use these tools responsibly: verifying generated code, maintaining security standards, and keeping code readable for humans.
• Security and privacy: With rising cyber threats, secure coding is not optional. Citing specific examples (e.g., preventing injection attacks, following OWASP guidelines) shows you’re evaluating real-world readiness.

You don’t need to turn a performance review into a research paper, but being explicit about these trends makes your feedback feel current and relevant.

Sample phrases you can adapt for different situations

Here are more short, reusable phrases that fit naturally into examples of performance review examples for software developers.

For strong technical execution

• “Consistently delivers production-ready code with minimal defects and clear test coverage.”
• “Improved average page load time by X%, positively impacting user engagement metrics.”
• “Quickly ramps up on new technologies and applies them thoughtfully, rather than chasing trends.”

For collaboration and communication

• “Actively seeks input from Design and Product early, which reduces rework later in the cycle.”
• “Provides respectful, specific feedback in code reviews that raises the overall quality of the codebase.”
• “Shares context proactively in written updates so teammates are rarely blocked or surprised.”

For growth areas

• “Needs to invest more time in understanding system-wide impact before proposing changes.”
• “Should improve estimation by breaking work into smaller, verifiable milestones.”
• “Would benefit from pairing with senior engineers on architecture decisions to build confidence and depth.”

You can mix and match these to create your own example of a performance review paragraph tailored to the developer’s situation.

FAQ: Real examples and common questions

How do I write good examples of performance review comments for a software developer?

Start with specific projects from the review period. For each, note what the developer did, how they did it, and what changed because of their work. Then turn those notes into 2–4 sentences that clearly state strengths, gaps, and next steps. The real examples in this article can serve as a template.

What is an example of constructive feedback for a senior software engineer?

A useful example might be: “You consistently deliver high-quality designs, but several teammates have shared that it’s hard to get your input early enough in the planning process. Next quarter, I’d like you to join discovery sessions earlier so we can incorporate your perspective before timelines and scope are locked in.” This targets a specific behavior without attacking intent or competence.

How many performance review examples should I include per developer?

Most managers find that 3–5 focused examples per review period work well. Too few, and the review feels vague. Too many, and it becomes noisy. Pick projects that represent patterns, not one-off anomalies.

Can I reuse these examples of performance review examples for software developers verbatim?

You can, but you’ll get better results if you adjust them to match your company’s language, values, and performance criteria. Copying structure and tone is usually more effective than copying sentences word for word.

Where can I learn more about effective performance feedback?

For evidence-based guidance on feedback and performance management, you can explore resources from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (opm.gov), management research summaries from universities such as MIT and Harvard (mitsloan.mit.edu, hbs.edu), and organizational psychology overviews from the American Psychological Association (apa.org). These sources focus on general performance management principles that you can adapt to engineering contexts.

If you use these examples of performance review examples for software developers as a starting point—and then layer in your own context, culture, and expectations—you’ll write reviews that are not only clearer, but also far more useful for the engineers who read them.