I analyzed 100 Software Engineer job descriptions and found the most common ATS keywords in 2025 — here's the full list
I spent time going through Software Engineer and AI/ML Engineer
job postings and pulled out the keywords that appeared most
frequently in ATS screening.
Here's what actually matters in 2025:
🤖 AI/ML Engineering
- Large Language Models (LLMs)
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
- LangChain / LlamaIndex
- Prompt Engineering
- Fine-tuning (LoRA, PEFT, RLHF)
- Vector Databases (Pinecone, Weaviate)
- MLOps
- OpenAI API / Anthropic API
- Model Evaluation & Monitoring
⚙️ Core Engineering
- Distributed Systems
- Microservices
- API Design (REST, gRPC, GraphQL)
- System Design
- CI/CD
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
- Observability (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog)
☁️ Cloud & Platform
- AWS (SageMaker, Lambda, ECS)
- Google Cloud / Vertex AI
- Kubernetes
- Apache Kafka
- Apache Spark / Databricks
🏆 Leadership & Soft Skills
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Technical Leadership
- Mentorship
- Agile / Scrum
- On-call / SRE Rotation
Key tips:
→ Mirror the exact phrasing from the job description
→ Include both abbreviations AND full forms once
→ Add keywords to your Skills section AND weave them
into your experience bullets
→ Pick 15-20 most relevant keywords per application
→ Never keyword-stuff — use each one in context of
a real achievement
Hope this helps someone land their next role. Happy to
answer any resume questions in the comments!