How do I write a Software Engineering Manager resume?
October 1, 2018 8:13 AM Subscribe
I manage two teams of software engineers. I am looking for a new job. How do I write my resume?
I currently manage two teams of software engineers. Prior to this job, my roles were typically 85% to 100% hands-on development. My current job is 100% management, with no hands-on development work. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to describe my current job on my resume.
I know how to talk about my basic job functions (hiring, clearing blockers, managing projects, etc). That part should be pretty easy.
My dilemma is this : how do I mention the projects my engineers worked on? I didn't do any of the engineering work, even though I led the team in those efforts, often going so far as to work out the design/architecture with the team. Right now, I can think of three ways to state a project like "Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month" :
* Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month.
(the problem here is that it makes it sound like I did the engineering work, when in fact I led the team that did the engineering work)
* Led the team in an effort to retire redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month
(the problem here is that for every project, I would need to find a new, creative way to say "Led the team in an effort to," which seems like it would be annoying to read)
* Under my leadership, the team successfully executed on the following projects :
[indent]* Retire redundant pipelines saving $12K per month
[indent]* Delivered the X project which served Y customer requests per minute
[indent]* Scaled up the Z system to handle an N% increase in volume
[indent]* etc.
(the problem here is that it's kind of an odd format. Also, it doesn't really give me a whole lot of credit, even though I worked with the team in-depth on these projects)
What's the commonly-accepted way to communicate this? Is there one?
I currently manage two teams of software engineers. Prior to this job, my roles were typically 85% to 100% hands-on development. My current job is 100% management, with no hands-on development work. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to describe my current job on my resume.
I know how to talk about my basic job functions (hiring, clearing blockers, managing projects, etc). That part should be pretty easy.
My dilemma is this : how do I mention the projects my engineers worked on? I didn't do any of the engineering work, even though I led the team in those efforts, often going so far as to work out the design/architecture with the team. Right now, I can think of three ways to state a project like "Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month" :
* Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month.
(the problem here is that it makes it sound like I did the engineering work, when in fact I led the team that did the engineering work)
* Led the team in an effort to retire redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month
(the problem here is that for every project, I would need to find a new, creative way to say "Led the team in an effort to," which seems like it would be annoying to read)
* Under my leadership, the team successfully executed on the following projects :
[indent]* Retire redundant pipelines saving $12K per month
[indent]* Delivered the X project which served Y customer requests per minute
[indent]* Scaled up the Z system to handle an N% increase in volume
[indent]* etc.
(the problem here is that it's kind of an odd format. Also, it doesn't really give me a whole lot of credit, even though I worked with the team in-depth on these projects)
What's the commonly-accepted way to communicate this? Is there one?
With the title as a manager, your role is implied. No one is going to expect a manager to do the coding.
Hahahahaha, if only that were true. During my interviews I've found that many (MANY) companies seem to expect their managers to be elbows deep in code, up to half their time. But anyway, that doesn't address the question, so:
* Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month.
(the problem here is that it makes it sound like I did the engineering work, when in fact I led the team that did the engineering work)
This is what you should write. You're just trying to get your foot in the door, and when they ask you about this line during an interview, they will ask if you had any contribution to the code or if your responsibilities were entirely managerial. They'll probably ask how many people were on the team and how responsibilities were divided. Be aware as you apply and interview that they may be looking for an answer that leans one particular direction. If you get a sense of that direction you can spin your answer to reflect it, but try to be truthful as you spin. So if you made architectural decisions, did code reviews, or provided guidance on implementation, you can bring those up (or not) as the situation warrants.
posted by fedward at 9:14 AM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
Hahahahaha, if only that were true. During my interviews I've found that many (MANY) companies seem to expect their managers to be elbows deep in code, up to half their time. But anyway, that doesn't address the question, so:
* Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month.
(the problem here is that it makes it sound like I did the engineering work, when in fact I led the team that did the engineering work)
This is what you should write. You're just trying to get your foot in the door, and when they ask you about this line during an interview, they will ask if you had any contribution to the code or if your responsibilities were entirely managerial. They'll probably ask how many people were on the team and how responsibilities were divided. Be aware as you apply and interview that they may be looking for an answer that leans one particular direction. If you get a sense of that direction you can spin your answer to reflect it, but try to be truthful as you spin. So if you made architectural decisions, did code reviews, or provided guidance on implementation, you can bring those up (or not) as the situation warrants.
posted by fedward at 9:14 AM on October 1, 2018 [2 favorites]
As an aside, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, people in the Reddit CS Career Questions sub will help you with your resume (more or less, depending on attendance). You can participate by creating an anonymized version of your resume and uploading it to imgur or something. You might see a lot of recent-graduate stuff, but there are olds in there as well.
posted by rhizome at 11:02 AM on October 1, 2018
posted by rhizome at 11:02 AM on October 1, 2018
What's the commonly-accepted way to communicate this? Is there one?
There is no commonly-accepted way. Most people I've take the approach of describing the largest scale impact their group did (mostly to show scale of operations - for instance, size of product produced) and then describing specific impact from them. The assumption is that the reader can separate vague descriptions of scale as being other people.
I agree that most newer tech companies expect their management to have a strong connection to the work being done, so you should be able to describe achievements commensurate with the level of detail on the resume.
"Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month"
I figure this is an example, but your number is oddly specific so it makes me wonder if that's actually on your resume. If you manage two entire teams, this is not a particularly strong item to put on your resume. Say you manage 10 FTE - that's easily ~$3M/year or $250K/month. If I were reading this, I would question why you view one of your strongest achievements saving an amount of money worth ~4% of your compensation costs or less.
posted by saeculorum at 1:09 PM on October 1, 2018
There is no commonly-accepted way. Most people I've take the approach of describing the largest scale impact their group did (mostly to show scale of operations - for instance, size of product produced) and then describing specific impact from them. The assumption is that the reader can separate vague descriptions of scale as being other people.
I agree that most newer tech companies expect their management to have a strong connection to the work being done, so you should be able to describe achievements commensurate with the level of detail on the resume.
"Retired redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month"
I figure this is an example, but your number is oddly specific so it makes me wonder if that's actually on your resume. If you manage two entire teams, this is not a particularly strong item to put on your resume. Say you manage 10 FTE - that's easily ~$3M/year or $250K/month. If I were reading this, I would question why you view one of your strongest achievements saving an amount of money worth ~4% of your compensation costs or less.
posted by saeculorum at 1:09 PM on October 1, 2018
It really depends on the cuture of the company you are applying to.
Here at everyone’s favorite fruit company (or at least my part of it), engineering managers are way too busy to be heavily involved in the actual code. In fact, an engineering manager resume that mentioned coding a bunch would get docked because you are more of a “manager” and not actually a manager.
The general theme you want to get across is “I know my direct report’s jobs well enough that I could step in if someone got hit by a bus before a big deadline, but day-to-day i’m doing all the managing type stuff so my underlings don’t have to deal with it.”
posted by sideshow at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2018
Here at everyone’s favorite fruit company (or at least my part of it), engineering managers are way too busy to be heavily involved in the actual code. In fact, an engineering manager resume that mentioned coding a bunch would get docked because you are more of a “manager” and not actually a manager.
The general theme you want to get across is “I know my direct report’s jobs well enough that I could step in if someone got hit by a bus before a big deadline, but day-to-day i’m doing all the managing type stuff so my underlings don’t have to deal with it.”
posted by sideshow at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2018
OK, before I get to the meat of your question, I'd suggest you ask yourself how you think you are going to use that resume. In 2018, I find that job seekers are just as likely to be found on Linked In and the resumes are mostly read by robots as a pre-screen activity. I won't go into all of my thoughts and opinions on that, but suffice to say that plenty has been written about how job searching is changing that will affect how you put your resume together.
On to your question. I came in to say the same thing as sideshow above - what you communicate will depend a lot on the culture of the company you are applying to. I've been in roles where I was either hiring someone at your level or helping someone else hire at that level. Here is a list of questions that I might care about. These aren't questions that have right/wrong answers; it is more like they will be relevant/irrelevant depending on who is doing the hiring.
The basics:
- Have you been a developer at some point (BS detector, empathy for people you are managing)
- What is your span of control?
- How much budget do you manage?
- How big is your software portfolio (LOC or projects/apps)
- How big is your company (Startup? Fortune 500? Something between?)
- Do you have specific domain or industry expertise?
What kind of SW do you develop?
- Product sold to external customers? Or for internal customers?
- Does your group develop requirements, or do you get them from outside (like sales/marketing)?
- Do you have a product management role as part of your responsibilities?
- Are you supporting multiple customers with the same product/codebase, or a portfolio of bespoke apps?
- Is your group doing legacy support, new development, or a mix?
Process...
(especially mention any of this stuff where you brought the process change to the org)
- Tools and process experience around defect tracking
- Tools and process experience around source code control
- Tools and process around testing? Do the testers report to you?
- Formal change control process
- Does your group do dev ops? agile?
- Are you in control of the architectural decisions (wholly, partially, not at all)
- What technology stack(s) do your groups use?
Infrastructure...
- is your environment hosted internally at your company, or cloud?
- who manages your environment (your group, or another group at your company, or outsourced)?
- how in control are you of the HW environment?
Finances...
- does your group bill for services or do some kind of chargeback?
- Are you responsible for selecting and buying SW tools and libraries? Is the spend there significant?
Operations...
- Are your responsible for field support/user support, deployments, upgrades, or is there another group responsible for operations?
- If another group, are your engineers acting as tier 2 or tier 3 support?
- Is support 7x24, or 5x12, or something else? Do you have to manage a pager rotation for people?
Misc stuff...
- Do you have a security clearance?
- Any special certs?
- Does your org have any special certs or development requirements (e.g. ISO 9000 or you do FDA 510K medical device development, that kind of thing).
I would suggest using the interesting answers to these questions as source material to build your resume and your Linked In profile. The stat about people just looking at a resume for an average of six seconds/the top third of the first page is true in my experience. The robots, of course, read the whole thing. The project stuff you mention in your question is just page filler that only the robots will read. Good luck with the job search!
posted by kovacs at 8:12 PM on October 2, 2018
On to your question. I came in to say the same thing as sideshow above - what you communicate will depend a lot on the culture of the company you are applying to. I've been in roles where I was either hiring someone at your level or helping someone else hire at that level. Here is a list of questions that I might care about. These aren't questions that have right/wrong answers; it is more like they will be relevant/irrelevant depending on who is doing the hiring.
The basics:
- Have you been a developer at some point (BS detector, empathy for people you are managing)
- What is your span of control?
- How much budget do you manage?
- How big is your software portfolio (LOC or projects/apps)
- How big is your company (Startup? Fortune 500? Something between?)
- Do you have specific domain or industry expertise?
What kind of SW do you develop?
- Product sold to external customers? Or for internal customers?
- Does your group develop requirements, or do you get them from outside (like sales/marketing)?
- Do you have a product management role as part of your responsibilities?
- Are you supporting multiple customers with the same product/codebase, or a portfolio of bespoke apps?
- Is your group doing legacy support, new development, or a mix?
Process...
(especially mention any of this stuff where you brought the process change to the org)
- Tools and process experience around defect tracking
- Tools and process experience around source code control
- Tools and process around testing? Do the testers report to you?
- Formal change control process
- Does your group do dev ops? agile?
- Are you in control of the architectural decisions (wholly, partially, not at all)
- What technology stack(s) do your groups use?
Infrastructure...
- is your environment hosted internally at your company, or cloud?
- who manages your environment (your group, or another group at your company, or outsourced)?
- how in control are you of the HW environment?
Finances...
- does your group bill for services or do some kind of chargeback?
- Are you responsible for selecting and buying SW tools and libraries? Is the spend there significant?
Operations...
- Are your responsible for field support/user support, deployments, upgrades, or is there another group responsible for operations?
- If another group, are your engineers acting as tier 2 or tier 3 support?
- Is support 7x24, or 5x12, or something else? Do you have to manage a pager rotation for people?
Misc stuff...
- Do you have a security clearance?
- Any special certs?
- Does your org have any special certs or development requirements (e.g. ISO 9000 or you do FDA 510K medical device development, that kind of thing).
I would suggest using the interesting answers to these questions as source material to build your resume and your Linked In profile. The stat about people just looking at a resume for an average of six seconds/the top third of the first page is true in my experience. The robots, of course, read the whole thing. The project stuff you mention in your question is just page filler that only the robots will read. Good luck with the job search!
posted by kovacs at 8:12 PM on October 2, 2018
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Under my leadership the team was able to retire redundant pipelines, saving $12K per month. In addition, we delivered the X project which served Y customer requests per minute, Scaled up the Z system to handle an N% increase in volume, and ......
posted by WizKid at 8:40 AM on October 1, 2018 [1 favorite]