Real-world examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes

Strong examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes

Before obsessing over formats or fonts, fix your verbs. The best examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes all do the same thing: they push your bullets toward outcomes, not activities.

Compare these two lines from a backend engineer’s resume:

• Weak: Worked on microservices for the payments team.
• Stronger: Architected and deployed payment microservices that reduced checkout latency by 27% and supported a 3x increase in peak traffic.

The second line uses architected and deployed—action verbs that signal ownership and impact. It also weaves in measurable results, which modern recruiters expect. According to a 2024 survey of recruiters by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), quantifiable outcomes remain one of the top factors in resume evaluations (naceweb.org).

When you study examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes, look for three things:

• A clear, specific verb that shows your level of responsibility.
• A concrete deliverable (feature, system, model, test suite, migration).
• A measurable or observable outcome (faster, cheaper, more reliable, higher adoption).

The following sections break down real examples across common tech roles.

Software engineer: best examples of action verbs with metrics

For software engineers, the strongest examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes combine verbs like designed, implemented, optimized, refactored, automated, scaled with hard numbers.

Instead of writing generic bullets like “Responsible for building APIs,” consider these real examples:

• Designed and implemented RESTful APIs in Node.js that cut average response time from 450ms to 120ms and supported 1.5M+ monthly requests.
• Refactored legacy Java modules into modular services, reducing production defects by 34% over two release cycles.
• Automated regression test suites using Cypress and GitHub Actions, increasing test coverage from 55% to 88% and shortening release cycles from biweekly to weekly.
• Optimized Postgres queries and indexes, reducing database CPU usage by 40% and eliminating timeouts during peak traffic.
• Engineered a feature flag system with LaunchDarkly that enabled safe rollouts and reduced rollback incidents by 60%.

These examples include verbs that clearly show what you did, followed by the technology, then the result. When you look for examples of examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes, notice how the verb sets the tone. Engineered suggests deeper technical ownership than helped with or worked on.

A quick pattern you can reuse:

[Action verb] + what you built/changed + tools/stack + quantified outcome

This is one of the best examples of a reusable formula that keeps your bullets focused and scannable.

Data science and analytics: examples include impact on decisions

Data roles live and die by whether your work changed decisions or behavior. The best examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes for data scientists and analysts highlight verbs like modeled, predicted, analyzed, experimented, visualized, validated, deployed.

Consider these real examples:

• Modeled customer churn using gradient boosting (XGBoost), improving retention prediction accuracy by 19% and informing a targeted outreach campaign that reduced churn by 8% in one quarter.
• Analyzed product usage logs in BigQuery to identify drop‑off points, driving UX changes that increased onboarding completion from 62% to 79%.
• Designed and executed A/B tests on pricing experiments, partnering with Product and Finance to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) by 6.3%.
• Built and deployed a propensity model in Python and AWS SageMaker that prioritized sales outreach, contributing to a 14% lift in conversion rate.
• Visualized executive KPIs in Tableau, consolidating 7 legacy reports into a single dashboard used by VP‑level leadership for weekly decisions.

These examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes show more than technical skill; they show business impact. That’s exactly what hiring managers look for. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics emphasizes that data roles are projected to grow faster than average through 2032, particularly those that connect analytics to organizational strategy (bls.gov). Your verbs should reflect that strategic angle.

Product management: examples of action verbs that show leadership

For product managers, the best examples of action verbs are less about code and more about influence and outcomes. Strong verbs include prioritized, launched, coordinated, aligned, validated, defined, scoped, negotiated.

Here are examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes for PM roles:

• Prioritized a 12‑month product roadmap using customer interviews, NPS feedback, and revenue impact, increasing on‑time delivery of high‑value features from 58% to 87%.
• Launched a self‑serve onboarding flow that reduced time‑to‑value from 7 days to under 24 hours and improved trial‑to‑paid conversion by 11%.
• Defined and tracked product success metrics (activation, retention, feature adoption) via Mixpanel, enabling data‑driven iteration across 3 core features.
• Coordinated cross‑functional squads (Engineering, Design, Marketing, Sales) to deliver a new pricing page, boosting click‑through to checkout by 22%.
• Validated product hypotheses through 30+ user interviews and usability tests, informing a redesign that cut task completion time in half.

These are strong examples of examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes because they:

• Start with a leadership verb.
• Name the artifact (roadmap, flow, metrics, experiments).
• Tie directly to adoption, revenue, or user behavior.

When you build your own bullets, ask: Can a stranger reading this see what decision or outcome changed because of me? If not, refine the verb and the result.

UX/UI design: real examples that connect design to outcomes

Design resumes often fall into the trap of vague verbs like “worked on” or “helped with.” Stronger examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes for designers lean on verbs like redesigned, prototyped, iterated, tested, simplified, clarified, collaborated.

Examples include:

• Redesigned the account settings experience for a B2B SaaS product, reducing support tickets related to billing by 31% within three months of launch.
• Prototyped and tested mobile navigation concepts in Figma with 18 target users, increasing task success rates from 63% to 92%.
• Simplified a complex reporting interface by consolidating filters and adding contextual help, cutting average report creation time from 8 minutes to 3 minutes.
• Collaborated with engineering to define design tokens and a shared component library, reducing UI inconsistencies by 70% across core flows.
• Iterated on onboarding emails and in‑app prompts with Marketing, boosting new‑user activation by 15%.

These real examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes show a clean link between design work and measurable results: fewer tickets, faster tasks, more activation. That’s what separates a portfolio‑style description from a hireable resume bullet.

DevOps, SRE, and infrastructure: examples of verbs that signal reliability

For DevOps and SRE roles, hiring managers scan for verbs that indicate reliability, automation, and incident reduction. Strong examples include automated, hardened, monitored, instrumented, containerized, migrated, stabilized, reduced.

Here are examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes for these roles:

• Automated infrastructure provisioning with Terraform and AWS, cutting environment setup time from 3 days to under 2 hours.
• Instrumented distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry, reducing mean time to detect (MTTD) by 45% and mean time to resolve (MTTR) by 38%.
• Hardened Kubernetes clusters by implementing network policies and pod security standards, passing internal security audits with zero critical findings.
• Containerized legacy services and implemented blue‑green deployments, decreasing deployment‑related downtime by 80%.
• Monitored key SLOs and tuned alerting thresholds in Prometheus and Grafana, reducing alert fatigue and cutting false positives by 50%.

These are some of the best examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes for reliability roles because they highlight safety, automation, and measurable stability improvements—exactly what these jobs are hired to deliver.

Early‑career and career‑switcher examples of action verbs

If you’re new to tech or switching careers, you still need strong verbs—you just anchor them to internships, projects, bootcamps, or previous roles with transferable skills.

Here are real examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes when you have limited direct experience:

• Developed a full‑stack MERN application as a capstone project, implementing JWT‑based auth and deploying to Render with CI/CD on GitHub Actions.
• Collaborated with a 4‑person team in a coding bootcamp to build a React dashboard, integrating a public API and unit tests with Jest.
• Migrated manual Excel reporting to a Python‑based ETL pipeline using Pandas, reducing weekly reporting time from 4 hours to 20 minutes.
• Documented REST API endpoints and created onboarding guides for new team members, cutting onboarding time by approximately 30%.

These examples of examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes show that even without a long job history, you can:

• Use strong verbs.
• Reference real tools and frameworks.
• Quantify time saved, errors reduced, or scope delivered.

How to choose the right action verb for your tech resume

Looking at examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes is helpful, but you still need to choose verbs that match your level and responsibilities. A junior developer who owned an entire platform might raise eyebrows; a staff engineer who helped with a core migration might undersell themselves.

A practical way to pick verbs:

• For ownership and leadership: led, owned, directed, drove, championed, orchestrated.
• For building and coding: implemented, engineered, developed, coded, integrated.
• For improvement and optimization: optimized, refactored, streamlined, accelerated, reduced.
• For discovery and research: analyzed, investigated, researched, validated, tested.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers maintains helpful action verb lists for students and early‑career professionals that can spark ideas (naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-and-self-development). Use these as a starting point, then adapt them to modern tech stacks and your actual outcomes.

When in doubt, ask yourself: If this bullet started with “responsible for,” would it sound like a job posting? If yes, rewrite it with a sharper verb and a clear result.

ATS and keyword strategy: combining action verbs with tech terms

Action verbs alone won’t get you through an ATS. You also need the right keywords—languages, frameworks, tools, and role‑specific phrases pulled from the job description. The best examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes combine both in a single bullet.

For example:

• Implemented event‑driven architecture using Kafka and Spring Boot, improving throughput for order processing by 3x.
• Optimized Snowflake warehouse usage and dbt models, cutting monthly compute costs by 28% while maintaining SLA performance.
• Automated vulnerability scanning with OWASP ZAP and GitLab CI, reducing time to detect high‑severity issues from weeks to hours.

Each bullet:

• Starts with a clear action verb.
• Includes ATS‑friendly keywords (Kafka, Spring Boot, Snowflake, dbt, OWASP ZAP, GitLab CI).
• Ends with a measurable outcome.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management notes that tailoring your resume language to the job announcement significantly improves screening outcomes for federal roles (opm.gov). The same principle applies in private‑sector tech: mirror the employer’s terminology while keeping your verbs active and honest.

FAQ: examples of action verbs in tech resumes

Q: Can you give an example of a strong bullet for a junior software engineer?
Yes. Here’s one of the best examples for an early‑career engineer: Implemented new React components and integrated REST APIs for the onboarding flow, fixing 12+ UI bugs and improving page load time by 35%. This combines action verbs (implemented, integrated) with a clear result.

Q: How many action verbs should I repeat on my resume?
Some repetition is fine, but if every bullet starts with “implemented” or “managed,” it reads flat. Skim through examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes and build a small list of 10–15 verbs that fit your level and rotate them naturally.

Q: Do hiring managers really care about the specific verbs, or just the results?
Both matter. Results are the headline, but verbs frame your role in achieving them. Real examples of tech resumes that perform well usually pair a strong verb with a metric; weak resumes rely on vague verbs and no numbers.

Q: Is it okay to use the same verbs as in online examples of resumes?
Yes, as long as you’re describing your real work accurately. Action verbs like designed, optimized, or automated are common across many strong resumes. What differentiates you is the context and the results you attach to them.

Q: How do I adapt these examples of action verbs for non‑coding tech roles like IT support?
Focus on verbs that reflect service and reliability: resolved, diagnosed, configured, trained, documented, upgraded. For example: Resolved an average of 25+ support tickets per day with a 97% satisfaction rating, and documented fixes that reduced repeat tickets by 18%.

Use these examples of examples of how to use action verbs in tech resumes as building blocks—not scripts. Swap in your stack, your metrics, and your real impact. If each bullet starts with a clear verb and ends with a tangible outcome, you’re already ahead of most applicants in the 2024–2025 tech hiring market.