As a front-end developer, you know how to make a seamless web app that helps users accomplish what they need to do. You have a strong combination of technical ability and creativity.
It can be really difficult to channel this wide-ranging developer skillset properly on a resume to impress employers.
That’s where we come in. Over the last few months, we analyzed numerous developer resumes and learned exactly what works to help front-end developers get more interviews.
We distilled what we learned into 12 front-end developer resume examples to give you some brain food.
We’ll also share some handy resume tips and resume-building tools that have worked to help other developers land jobs in 2024.
Why this resume works
- Let’s get right to it: including quantifiable metrics in your front-end developer resume will increase your chances of getting an interview by 22 percent. Try to quantify your impact in your past developer roles when possible, even if those impacts are rough estimates.
- Focus on your accomplishments instead of your responsibilities. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about your process in the interview, but your resume is not the place to be bashful about what you’ve achieved so far in your career.
- Let your work experience section provide plenty of context and breathe some life into the skills you list on your resume.
- For example, mentioning that you “rebuilt 4-year old SaaS application in React 15 and Redux with full user experience redesign to release a beat MVP in 8 months” shows future employers that you’ve actually applied your learned skills.
Why this resume works
- Any hiring manager or recruiter who knows what they’re doing knows that front-end developers have specific JavaScript framework preferences. Be honest when building your resume. If you have extensive experience in Angular and only passive knowledge of React, then only include your Angular experience.
- As a developer, it’s better to be an expert in a few languages or frameworks than a jack-of-all-trades.
- Limit your skills section to 6-10 on which you’d be comfortable being interviewed. If you haven’t programmed in a specific language, it most likely shouldn’t be on your senior front-end developer resume.
- Takeaway: Only include the languages/ frameworks in which you have programming experience.
Why this resume works
- Administrators first notice when you apply for a front-end developer position of any level whether you have the fundamental qualifications to perform the job adequately.
- With that said, include any licenses or certifications in a dedicated “Certifications” section on your mid-level front-end developer resume. Our easy-to-use resume templates let you add a section for certificates and licenses. Including your certifications in a specific section makes this determination super easy.
- If you have certifiable skills, but lack certification, your professional experience or well-built projects can showcase the practical application of your skills.
- Because mid-level roles exist in a non-junior, non-senior type purgatory, it may be necessary to include personal, related projects on which you’ve worked. Expand upon those, your freelance clients, or professional experience. If you’ve got a target company in mind and time to impress, build a project similar to their product or showcase where they could improve their product through optimization.
Why this resume works
- Unlike the resume summary that’s reserved for veteran candidates with 10+ years of experience in a field, career objectives exist to support and enhance whatever work experience you list, even if limited.
- Instead of writing a lengthy junior front-end developer resume that includes irrelevant skills and knowledge, use a career objective to instill confidence in the reader that you’ve got a history of driving value (even if your record is short).
- Emphasize metrics in your work experience. An employer won’t spend much time reviewing your resume initially, so bullet points should quickly zoom in your capability to score that first-round interview.
- Example: Worked in an Agile, collaborative environment to receive design requirements, peer program, and test 100% of all applications
- Example: Assisted the development team in crafting 6 WordPress sites with testing, deployment, and site updates
Why this resume works
- Don’t let limited experience hinder you from landing a job interview with your dream company. A research project you undertook at college could be your junior front-end web developer resume’s saving grace. Here, you want to emphasize your findings, lessons learned, and skills mastered throughout the process.
- It’s about showcasing your ability to deliver tangible results in real-world scenarios, especially those mirroring challenges the hiring company faces. See how Grayson talks about using Webpack for bundling project assets and presenting 54 key insights as a research team member.
Why this resume works
- Even as a rookie, you can make your entry-level front-end developer resume shine! You just need to convince the hiring manager you know how to program and build great front-end experiences. What’s a great way to do that? With projects!
- Projects can be anything that you’ve built before. These can be those you completed in class or side projects you undertook independently. They increase your chances of getting an interview and give you something tangible to talk about once you get there.
- Projects aren’t the only hidden secret to writing rich entry-level resumes. Another valuable tip is the resume objective.
- A worthwhile objective should be a two to three-sentence statement that’s customized to each job, mentions the company by name, and is sprinkled with relevant keywords you’ve mined from the job description.
- Takeaway: As an entry-level front-end dev, try to include one to two projects you’ve worked on to showcase your skills.
Why this resume works
- Want to ensure your Java front-end developer resume pops from the first glance? Making strategic use of bold, underlining, or italics to highlight key achievements could be the golden ticket you need.
- This simple act ensures your career-defining accomplishments shine, even during swift scans. That provides a roadmap that navigates the hiring manager toward the dazzling milestones of your career journey. Notice how Levi bolds “18% increase in mobile users,” “41% reduction in software bug issues post-release,” and “saving $4,876 per month due to reduced server load.”
Why this resume works
- Generic and vague bullet points and skills are the death of a React developer resume. You’ve got the skills and the experience to prove it, so list skills on your resume like React Router and Redux.
- Go beyond that by showing how you used those skills in your work experience bullet points—and expand those thoughts further with a cover letter generator.
Why this resume works
- Including measurable metrics and tools used in your freelance front-end developer resume sets you ahead of other applicants. You stand out from the rest by quantifying your achievements in past roles even if you have to provide rough estimates
- In a nutshell, focus more on what you have achieved than your roles in past jobs. You can detail the actual processes of your responsibilities during an actual interview but not on your resume.
Why this resume works
- As a UI front-end developer, you must show ownership over the projects on which you’ve worked. The best way to represent this is by using action verbs and quantifiable results.
- Impress the employer with your results and values like “worked with 6 designers, 2 product managers, and 11 developers,” “or “designed and developed 30+ productivity features,” “achieved 300+ new 5-star UI ratings,” and “helped feature development teams align 45+ design intents.”
- The title on your UI front-end developer resume (right under your name) should match the role to which you’re applying. To be more specific, your title should read “UI Front-End Developer” if you’re applying for a UI front-end developer role, regardless of your previous experience.
- The phrase “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” rings true here, but if all these resume-writing details are causing a rise in your blood pressure, take a deep breath and say “hello” to our free resume checker tool. It’s your new resume coach and best friend!
Why this resume works
- A role as dynamic as a WordPress front-end developer needs an equally well-made resume. Regardless of your experience level, you can find certain basics by analyzing job requirements in the WordPress and front-end developer job market.
- Starting with a BS foundation in computer science, followed by a summer internship, will successfully land you numerous junior to mid-level roles with ease.
- When seeking a specific position, customize your WordPress front-end developer resume by including current or previous job titles to fit the desired role best. Commonly interchangeable titles such as WordPress developer, WordPress front-end developer, and WordPress front-end engineer have virtually identical responsibilities. Still, they’ll be better received by the recruiter if your previous titles match the job for which you’ve applied.
- Speak with your current manager if you’re anxious about changing position titles. Always err on the side of caution. Asking for permission instead of forgiveness is universally better.
Why this resume works
- As a senior/lead marketing front-end developer, the need for a comprehensive career objective dwindles. Instead, the spotlight of your lead marketing front-end developer resume should be shining on work history, excellent KPIs, and leadership.
- Highlight a lengthy career in front-end roles for marketing companies with quantifiable data from multiple sources and jobs, as well as leadership and mentoring.
- It’s common to see a plethora of resume skills listed with an experienced developer. However, hold back from inundating the recruiter and stick with relevant proficiencies for the role to which you’re applying. Feel free to use our resume checker tool to avoid common pitfalls.
- As expected in a front-end developer, employers will want to see highly relevant skills like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (with additional libraries and frameworks).
- A degree in computer science is a potent tool that can open many doors. Combined with niche expertise, you have a robust and versatile problem-solving machine: a lead marketing front-end developer.
Related resume guides
Writing Your Front-End Developer Resume
If there is one thing you take away from this before you create a resume, then let it be this: quantify the bullet points on your resume whenever possible.
Our data show that is the most important factor in determining whether or not you’ll get an interview after controlling for experience and qualifications.
Here are some other high-level tips that we’ll dive into in more detail below:
- Customize your front-end developer resume for each job to which you apply.
- Only include languages and frameworks on which you’d be comfortable being interviewed.
- You most likely don’t need to have a resume objective.
- Again, quantify your impact!
- And finally, please, please avoid spelling and grammar errors.
Incorrect spelling or grammar is the silliest of reasons to be rejected for a job, and it is 100% preventable.
Be sure to proofread your resume a few times, then have someone else look at it for you.
Front-end developer job description for resume
It’s not what you want to hear, I know, but customizing your resume for each front-end role you apply to will improve your chances of getting more interviews.
I promise it’s easier to do than you may think and should take no more than 15 minutes for each application, especially if you take advantage of one of our free resume templates that make it easy to customize.
Here’s a good, quick process for tailoring your front-end developer resume for each job:
- They use their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to filter out candidates based on their skills and experience automatically.
- A non-technical HR person from the company reviews your resume.
- The hiring manager (usually technical) will review your candidacy to see if they think you’re a good fit.
To hammer home how easy this can be in practice, let’s look at a concrete example.
Example: Customize your account executive resume for the job
Work background
This front-end developer, Johann, has five years of experience building web apps for B2B companies. He is most comfortable with Angular, HTML/CSS, and PostgreSQL.
On his first version of his resume, this is how we describe his latest work experience:
Feedzai
August 2017 – Present, New York NY
Front-End Developer
- Architected product tours with React for a new feature that improved customer adoption by 22%, leading to $1.1M in incremental revenue
- Partnered with data science to develop the front-end for a product recommendation engine that increased user time on page by 4 minutes
- Migrated a multi-page user experience into a single-page app which improved customer engagement by 8%
Front-end developer job description
This is the job description for the role Johann is applying to at Acme Corp:
Responsibilities
- Design and develop features to meet customer requirements and business goals
- Build high-quality and highly reliable software to meet the needs of the product owners
- Write clean, elegant, and reusable code that solves complex problems
- Participate in design & code review processes
Qualifications
- Excellent problem-solving skills
- Strong knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Experience in one (or more) of the following frameworks: AngularJS, React JS, Vue JS, D3
- Experience working with Relational databases like PostgreSQL
- Experience with at least one MVC server-side framework like Rails or Django
Update the work experience
Most of the experience Johann listed for his time at Feedzai is directly applicable to this role at Acme Corp. His focus on business goals aligns perfectly with this job description.
The only difference I would make to his work experience is that I would explicitly include the languages he used for each of his projects to match the skills Acme Corp is looking for in this role.
The changes are underlined below.
Feedzai
August 2017 – Present, New York NY
Front-End Developer
- Architected product tours with React, HTML/CSS, and PostgreSQL for a new feature that improved customer adoption by 22%, leading to $1.1M in incremental revenue
- Partnered with data science to develop the front-end for a product recommendation engine that increased user time on page by 4 minutes using Django
- Migrated a multi-page user experience into a single-page app which improved customer engagement by 8% using React
These changes are small, but they make Johann a much more appealing candidate to Acme Corp.
Resume skills
Before a hiring manager or recruiter looks at your resume for a front-end dev role, an automated system called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) reviews your resume.
An ATS is filtering resumes based on keyword matching. This is why it’s critically important to try to include as many skills listed in the job description on your resume as possible.
Be careful to remember that a human will still look at your resume!
Nothing is a bigger red flag to a technical hiring manager than a resume where a developer claims knowledge of a laundry list of different skills and frameworks.
It’s much better to be an expert in one to two languages than a beginner in many different languages.
As a rule of thumb, only include languages and frameworks on which you’d be comfortable being interviewed.
Here are common resume skills employers look for in front-end developers to give you some inspiration.
Common resume skills for front-end developers
- JavaScript (ES6, React, Angular, Redux, Webpack)
- CSS (SASS)
- HTML
- CI/CD
- Agile Software Development
- Cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- UX Design
- Service Side Development (C#, Node.js)
- Typescript
- Python (Django)
- Git
- SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL)
Resume objective
95 percent of front-end developers shouldn’t include a resume objective on their resume.
Hiring managers are conditioned to ignore resume objectives because they’re usually generic and don’t add value to a resume.
You should only include an objective if you’re going to take the time to customize it for each job to which you apply.
To ensure a hiring manager reads your objective, you should include numbers and the company’s name to which you’re applying.
The company’s name will draw the hiring manager’s attention as they skim your objective, which will encourage them to read the entire resume objective.
Your front-end developer resume objective should include your top one to two qualifications or biggest career accomplishments (quantified, of course), as well as why you’re interested in the company/role to which you’re applying.
Here are a few resume objective examples for inspiration: your next role.
Front-end developer resume objective examples
- “Recent graduate with an MS in Computer Science looking to leverage my experience building responsive and scalable web apps to solve interesting problems that delight end-users.”
- “Throughout my career as a front-end developer, I’ve emphasized the importance of scalable and well-documented code. I enjoy working collaboratively but can also run projects on my own. Excited about the prospect of joining a product-driven company like Acme Corp.”
- “Experienced front-end developer who is comfortable working with JavaScript, HTML/CSS to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Looking for an opportunity to work at a company like Acme Corp with a positive social mission to democratize online payments.”
Measure your impact
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: the single most important thing you can do on your resume is to quantify your impact.
To accomplish this, focus on your accomplishments instead of your responsibilities. Don’t be afraid to brag on your resume!
Quantifying your impact on your resume accomplishes a few major goals:
- It quickly and convincingly makes the case that you’ll have a large impact on the role to which you’re applying.
- It convinces the hiring manager you know the metrics that ultimately matter are tangible business outcomes.
- Numbers draw the hiring manager’s attention, convincing them to spend more time on your resume.
These impacts can be very rough estimates!
To give you an idea of how you can quantify your impact as a front-end developer, try to ask these questions about your past projects and work experiences:
- Did a change you made improve the conversion rate?
- Did you work on a feature that improved time on the page?
- Were you tasked with launching a product or feature for a new or expanded market? How much revenue did this drive?
- Has something you worked on reduced the manual work required to complete certain tasks? By how much?
- Did you make a fix that reduced bug requests or increased the speed of a web app?
- Was there a tangible increase in customer retention or satisfaction due to something you built?
WRONG – no quantifiable metrics
Acme Corp
August 2017 – Present, New York NY
Front-End Developer
- Architected product tours with React for a new feature that improved customer adoption
- Partnered with data science to develop the front-end for a product recommendation engine that increased user time on page
- Migrated a multi-page user experience into a single-page app which improved customer engagement
RIGHT – quantifiable impact
Acme Corp
August 2017 – Present, New York NY
Front-End Developer
- Architected product tours with React for a new feature that improved customer adoption by 22%, leading to $1.1M in incremental revenue
- Partnered with data science to develop the front-end for a product recommendation engine that increased user time on page by 4 minutes
- Migrated a multi-page user experience into a single-page app which improved customer engagement by 8%
Applying for front-end developer positions can be incredibly stressful and demoralizing. Take a second to congratulate yourself on taking a huge step and updating or building your resume!
Before you know it, you’ll be in a new front-end role you love. You got this!
Front-End Developer Resume FAQs
Use numbers to add weight to your career achievements. Other candidates will say they developed platform technology solutions, reduced valuation time, improved user acquisition, or wrote maintainable code. That’s all well and good, but you’ll snag recruiters’ attention when you quantify your impact. Achievements that lead to improved time on page or conversion rate, a boost in revenue, a decrease in the manual workload, etc., are numbers you should talk about proudly in your front-end developer resume.
Additionally, taking the time to write a customized front-end developer cover letter (even if it’s not required in the job app) will complement your resume well.
There’s no end of technical skills and front-end tools that are available, but your resume shouldn’t be a dumping ground to list just anything. Check out the front-end developer job description to see what that company specifically needs. For instance, if they mention React, Angular, and Django, and you’re comfortable sharing in an interview how you’ve consistently used these skills to drive success, list these in your resume.
Everyone starts somewhere, and you can still build a resume that’s professional and enticing to employers. While including relevant coursework from college or internship experience is a great start, you’ll help hiring managers understand what you can offer when you share academic or personal projects that relied on front-end development skills. If you built a full-stack web app to help patients keep track of prescriptions as part of a class project, talk about the skills and tools you used as well as the impact of the project.
