Your iOS resume

Your resume has one job: get you the interview. A recruiter often looks at it for less than a minute. Make the important things easy to find.

#The basic rules

• One page if you have less than about 8–10 years of experience. Two pages at most.
• Newest job first.
• Results, not tasks. Say what changed because of your work.
• Numbers. Users, ratings, crash rate, speed, time saved.
• iOS keywords. Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, concurrency, XCTest, and the tools from the job post.
• Links. App Store apps and GitHub, if they help you.

#A good structure

NAME
iOS Engineer · City, Country · email · phone · linkedin.com/in/name · github.com/name

SUMMARY (optional, 2 lines)
iOS engineer with 5 years of experience building consumer apps in Swift and SwiftUI.
Focus on performance, offline support and app quality.

EXPERIENCE
Company — Senior iOS Engineer                        Jan 2023 – Present
- 3 to 5 impact bullets

Company — iOS Engineer                               Jun 2020 – Dec 2022
- 3 to 5 impact bullets

APPS
- App name — short description, rating, users, App Store link

SKILLS
Languages, frameworks, tools

EDUCATION
Degree, school, year

Juniors can put Projects above Experience if their projects are stronger than their jobs.

#How to write an impact bullet

Use this formula:

Action verb + what you did + how (tech) + result (number)

Example:

Rebuilt the image loading pipeline with async/await and an in-memory + disk cache, cutting feed scroll hitches by 60%.

• Action verb: Rebuilt
• What: the image loading pipeline
• How: async/await, two-level cache
• Result: 60% fewer scroll hitches

Good action verbs: built, led, shipped, reduced, improved, migrated, designed, automated, launched, mentored.

Weak words to avoid: "responsible for", "worked on", "helped with", "involved in".

#Good vs bad bullets

The good bullets answer three questions: What did you do? How? What changed?

#What if you have no numbers?

Many developers say "I don't have metrics". You usually have more than you think.

• App Store: rating, number of reviews, downloads.
• Crash tools: crash-free users or sessions (from Xcode Organizer or your crash reporting tool).
• Size: number of screens, lines of code removed, number of modules.
• Time: build time, release time, time to load a screen.
• People: team size, number of developers you mentored.
• Before and after: "from 3 manual steps to 1 command".

If you really have no number, say the scale or the effect:

Built the offline mode for field workers, so they can complete inspections in areas with no signal.

This is still much better than "Worked on offline mode".

#Example: one full experience section

Fitly — iOS Engineer                                   Mar 2021 – Present
- Led the move from UIKit to SwiftUI for all new screens; built a shared design-system
  package used by 4 teams.
- Cut crash rate from 1.5% to 0.2% of sessions by moving shared state into actors and
  fixing data races found with Thread Sanitizer.
- Built offline workout logging with SwiftData and background sync; 30% of workouts are now
  logged offline.
- Reduced CI build time from 25 to 11 minutes by splitting the app into Swift packages
  and caching dependencies.
- Interviewed 20+ iOS candidates and mentored 2 junior developers.

Five bullets. Each one has a result. Each one shows a different skill: architecture, quality, data, tooling, leadership.

#Links to apps and code

Links are strong proof for iOS developers. A recruiter can open your app in seconds.

App Store apps

• Add the App Store link (it looks like apps.apple.com/app/id123456789).
• Add one line of context: rating, users, your role.
• If the app is from your job, say what part you built.

APPS
- Fitly (Health & Fitness) — 4.7 stars, 500k+ downloads. I built the workout player and
  offline sync. apps.apple.com/app/id123456789
- Pocket Budget (personal project) — SwiftUI, SwiftData, WidgetKit. 2k downloads.
  apps.apple.com/app/id987654321

GitHub

Add GitHub only if it helps. Before you add it, check:

• Pinned repos are your best work, not old tutorials.
• Each pinned repo has a README with screenshots and "how to run".
• The code builds with the current Xcode.
• There are some tests.

One clean project with a good README is better than 30 empty repos.

#The skills section

Keep it short and grouped. Only list things you can talk about in an interview.

SKILLS
Languages:   Swift, Objective-C (reading and maintenance)
UI:          SwiftUI, UIKit, Auto Layout, Core Animation basics
Concurrency: async/await, actors, GCD, Combine
Data:        SwiftData, Core Data, Codable, Keychain
Testing:     XCTest, Swift Testing, snapshot tests
Tools:       Xcode, Instruments, Swift Package Manager, Fastlane, GitHub Actions

Do not write skill levels like "Swift 9/10" or progress bars. They do not mean anything to a reader.

#ATS tips

ATS means Applicant Tracking System. It is software that reads your resume before a person does. Some companies use it to filter or search resumes. A messy layout can confuse it.

• Simple layout. One column. No text boxes, no tables for main content.
• Standard headings. "Experience", "Skills", "Education", "Projects".
• No important text in images or icons. The software may not read them.
• Normal fonts. Any common font is fine.
• File type. PDF is usually fine. Use .docx if the job post asks for it.
• Keywords from the job post. If the post says "SwiftUI" and "Combine", and you know them, use the same words.
• Write both forms of short names once. "Swift Package Manager (SPM)", "Continuous Integration (CI)".
• Simple file name. firstname-lastname-ios-resume.pdf.

Quick test: copy all text from your PDF and paste it into a plain text editor. If the text comes out in the wrong order or is missing, the ATS will have the same problem.

#Tailor it for each job

You do not need a new resume each time. Change 3 things:

1. Summary: match the role. "consumer apps" vs "banking apps" vs "SDKs".
2. Bullet order: put the most relevant bullet first in each job.
3. Skills: move the skills from the job post to the front.

Example. The job post says: "Experience with app performance and Instruments." Move this bullet to the top:

Reduced cold launch time from 2.4 s to 1.1 s by moving SDK setup off the main thread, measured with Instruments.

#Common mistakes

• A list of tasks with no results.
• Too many buzzwords: "passionate", "rockstar", "ninja".
• Every technology you ever touched, including ones you cannot explain.
• Spelling mistakes in tech names: "IOS", "Swift UI", "X-code". Write "iOS", "SwiftUI", "Xcode".
• A photo, age or marital status (not expected in many countries; check local norms).
• Dates that do not match LinkedIn.
• Long paragraphs instead of bullets.

#Be ready to talk about every line

Interviewers read your resume and ask about it. If you wrote "Cut crash rate from 1.5% to 0.2%", expect:

• "What were the main crashes?"
• "How did you find them?"
• "How did you measure the crash rate?"
• "What would you do differently?"

Prepare a short story for each bullet. The Behavioral interviews chapter shows how.

#Final checklist

• One page (or two if you are very senior).
• Every bullet starts with an action verb.
• Most bullets have a number or a clear result.
• App Store and GitHub links work.
• Skills match the job post where it is true.
• Plain text copy-paste test passes.
• No spelling mistakes in tech names.
• You can talk for 2 minutes about every bullet.