Software Developer CV Example (New Zealand)

Software Developer is the title most New Zealand employers use, and a hiring lead at a Wellington agency, an Auckland product company or a Christchurch consultancy reads the CV in two passes. The first is a scan for the languages, the systems you have worked on and the scale they run at. The second, in the technical interview, tests whether the bullets are really yours. Write every line so that you would be glad to be asked about it.

The Sample CV below belongs to an intermediate developer with six years at a Wellington payments company and a software firm delivering for government, working mostly in TypeScript and C# on AWS. Each bullet names a system, an action and a measured result: response times, incidents, cost or hours given back to other developers.

Reorder it for each vacancy. A government agency wants accessibility, security and the Web Accessibility Standard; a product company wants features customers noticed; a consultancy wants range and client delivery. Mirror the languages and the cloud platform in the advert exactly. The US counterpart of this page is the software engineer resume example, written for American tech companies on Letter paper, and the Stack template puts the skills where a technical lead looks first.

Updated . The person and employers in this Sample CV are fictional. Written for applicants in New Zealand; the page for applicants in the US is the software engineer resume example.

Software Developer sample CV

Drawn at A4 proportions, the paper a New Zealand CV is printed on.

Oliver Brightwater

Software Developer (Intermediate), TypeScript and C# on AWS

Te Aro, Wellingtonoliver.brightwater@example.com022 555 0138

Summary

Software Developer with six years building web services and APIs in TypeScript and C# for a Wellington payments company and a software firm working for government clients. Designed the settlement reconciliation service that now matches every file on the platform, with no unmatched items carried over since launch. Cares about accessible front ends, readable pull requests and an on-call roster nobody dreads.

Experience

Software Developer (Intermediate), Southerly Fintech Ltd

– Present

Wellington

  • Designed and built a settlement reconciliation service in C# and PostgreSQL that matches 180,000 transactions a day, replacing a spreadsheet process that ran a day behind.
  • Cut the p95 response time on the account API from 900 ms to 220 ms by removing two synchronous calls and adding a cache in front of the ledger.
  • Set up the team's incident reviews; pages per on-call week fell from eight to two over twelve months.
  • Wrote the design note and migration plan for moving four services from EC2 to containers on ECS, delivered with no customer-facing downtime.
Developer, Tui Street Software

–

Wellington

  • Built the online application form and case API in TypeScript and Node for a government client, used by 40,000 applicants in its first year and tested against the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard.
  • Replaced a nightly CSV import with an event-driven pipeline so that case updates reached the client's contact centre in seconds instead of the next morning.
  • Added contract tests between three services, catching breaking API changes before release and ending a run of Monday-morning fixes.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), Software Engineering

Wairarapa Institute of Technology, Masterton

Final-year project: a queue-based job scheduler used by the institute's research group.

Skills

  • TypeScript
  • C# and .NET
  • Node.js
  • React
  • PostgreSQL
  • AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS)
  • Docker
  • REST and GraphQL
  • CI/CD with GitHub Actions
  • Observability (CloudWatch, Grafana)
  • Accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
  • Agile delivery

Certifications

  • AWS Certified Developer – Associate, Amazon Web Services,

Start yours from this example

Opens this sample in the editor, in one of the templates below. Swap in your details, then tailor it to each vacancy in about two minutes.

Use this example

How a New Zealand CV differs

A developer's CV in New Zealand differs from the American one in small ways that a hiring lead notices at once. The title is Software Developer with a level (graduate, intermediate, senior) rather than Software Engineer II; there is no regulator, so the credential is the work itself and a link to it; the government market in Wellington has its own standards for accessibility and security; and a recruiter expects referees and a line on your right to work. Two pages on A4, no photo, and the technical lead usually reads it before anyone else.

For a software developer in New Zealand

  1. Software Developer, with the level

    Write the title the way New Zealand adverts do: Graduate Developer, Intermediate Developer, Senior Developer, Lead Developer. Engineer is used too, but a numbered level such as Engineer II reads as imported.

  2. Right to work, in one line

    Say whether you are a New Zealand citizen or resident, or hold an Accredited Employer Work Visa, in one line near the contact details. Software Developer sits on Immigration New Zealand's Green List, so an applicant from overseas can say so once; the rest belongs in the application form.

  3. Government work has its own standards

    If you have delivered for a Wellington agency, name the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard, the Protective Security Requirements and any security clearance you hold. Agencies and the consultancies that serve them screen on them.

  4. A link to the work

    A GitHub profile or a portfolio link belongs beside your email. A recruiter in New Zealand expects to click it, so make sure the pinned repositories are the ones you would talk about.

  5. Referees are expected

    Name two referees at the end, usually your current technical lead and a previous one, or write that they are available on request. Employers call them before an offer.

Every CV in New Zealand

A4 paper
New Zealand prints on A4. Set the page size before you export; a Letter-sized PDF is the usual sign of a US template.
Two pages is normal
Two pages is the norm. One page for a first job; a third page only for a long senior career.
No photo
No photo, date of birth or marital status. New Zealand employers do not expect them and most prefer the CV without them.
Dates as DD/MM/YYYY
Day first where a full date appears, and month and year for each role. Never the US month-first order.
New Zealand English
New Zealand English follows British spelling: organise, programme, centre, licence, specialise.
Suburb and city, not a street address
"Mount Eden, Auckland" is enough on the contact line. A full street address is not expected.

More on applying in New Zealand, with every CV example for it, on the New Zealand page.

Templates for the software developer CV

All templates

Every template exports on A4. The previews are drawn on Letter; the editor sets the page size when you export.

How the CV changes with experience

The same software developer CV, written at three levels: a profile and three bullets for each.

Entry level

Zero to two years, or a first post in the title

Software engineering graduate with a summer internship at a Christchurch product company and a final-year project in distributed systems. Writes tested, readable code and asks good questions in code review.

  • Built an internal feature-flag service during the internship that the team kept in production after I left.
  • Wrote integration tests for a billing API that brought its critical paths to full coverage.
  • Built a replicated key-value store for the final-year project, with leader election and snapshotting.

Mid level

Three to seven years, owns a process or a workload

Software Developer with four years owning backend services from design to on-call, in Python and Go on Azure, for an Auckland logistics company.

  • Own the notifications service, which sends 1.5 million messages a day to drivers and customers.
  • Cut the team's cloud bill by right-sizing databases and adding autoscaling to two services.
  • Mentor two graduate developers and review most of the team's pull requests.

Senior

Eight years or more, leads people, budgets or programmes

Senior Developer and technical lead with ten years of experience designing high-volume systems, leading cross-team technical work and raising the engineering standard.

  • Led the re-architecture of the order pipeline across three teams, removing the single database that capped growth.
  • Set the service standards (logging, alerts, runbooks) now required for every new service in the company.
  • Interview developers, calibrate the hiring panel and mentor four developers towards promotion.

Skills to put on the software developer CV

Hard skills

One or two languages in depth
A technical lead trusts depth over a long list, so name the languages you would choose for a live coding interview.
System design
Intermediate and senior interviews in New Zealand include a design conversation, and bullets about services you designed set it up.
Databases, SQL first
Almost every backend vacancy involves data modelling and query performance, which interviewers probe with real examples.
A cloud platform such as AWS or Azure
Adverts name one, and matching it exactly helps the keyword match and the recruiter alike.
Testing and CI/CD
Developers who ship safely and often cut incidents, and that is a result every team values.
Accessibility and security for government work
Wellington agencies test against the Web Accessibility Standard and the Protective Security Requirements, and experience with both widens the vacancies you fit.
Observability and on-call
Owning production health shows maturity, and fewer pages or faster recovery are measurable outcomes.

Soft skills

Written design communication
Design notes are how developers get agreement across teams, and a good one is a sign of seniority.
Code review and mentoring
Lifting the developers around you is expected from intermediate level upward.
Working with product owners and clients
Developers who understand the customer problem build the right thing first time, which consultancies and product companies both hire for.

Mistakes that cost software developer interviews

  1. Bullets that only list technologies

    Used React, Node and AWS describes a stack, not your work. Say what you built with them, why, and what changed: response time, incidents, cost or time saved for other developers.

  2. Claiming the whole team's project

    Interviewers ask what you personally did. Be precise: designed the schema, wrote the migration, ran the rollout. Precision reads as confidence.

  3. No scale

    The same feature is a different job at a hundred users or a hundred thousand. Give requests per second, records, users or accounts wherever you can.

  4. American titles and layout

    Software Engineer II, a one-page layout on Letter paper and a street address tell a New Zealand recruiter the CV came from a US template. Use the level the advert uses and set the page to A4.

  5. Two pages of old projects

    Keep older roles short so your most recent and most relevant work sits on the first page. A technical lead decides long before the second.

Questions about the software developer CV

Should a software developer in New Zealand put a GitHub link on a CV?

Yes, if it shows work you are proud of. A thin profile does not hurt much, but a few maintained projects or open-source contributions help, especially for a graduate or intermediate role.

How many languages should I list?

The ones you could be interviewed in, usually three to six. Put your strongest first and make sure the bullets show you using them.

How long should a software developer CV be?

Two pages on A4. A graduate fits one; a senior developer with several products may need two full pages, but rarely a third.

Do I need a degree to get a developer job in New Zealand?

Many employers do not require one. Show equivalent evidence instead: shipped products, production experience, open-source work and the design depth the vacancy expects. A bootcamp or a New Zealand Diploma in Software Development is worth listing.

Should I mention my visa on a developer CV?

One line is enough: New Zealand citizen, resident, or the visa you hold and its expiry. Leave the rest for the application form, and never put a passport number on the page.

How do I tailor a developer CV to a vacancy?

Mirror the languages and platform where they are true of you, move the most similar project to the top and rewrite the summary for that team's problem. Paste the advert into Resume Master and it rewrites the CV against it in about two minutes.

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