The ATS-friendly format
Single column. Standard section headers ("Experience", "Education", "Skills"). No tables, no text boxes, no graphics. Send as PDF (not Word). 1–2 pages max. Filename: "Firstname Lastname CV.pdf".
The keyword game
Copy the job description into a tool like JobScan or just compare manually: every required skill that you genuinely have should appear once in your Summary AND once in your Experience bullets. Don’t keyword-stuff — ATS scoring is dumb but recruiters read after.
Bullets that work
Verb + what you did + measurable outcome. "Migrated billing pipeline from REST to gRPC, cutting p95 latency from 800ms to 110ms" beats "Worked on backend systems." If you don’t have a metric, pick a meaningful proxy ("for 12 internal teams" / "across 3 product areas").
Summary section
Two-line summary at the top: who you are + what you want. "Senior backend engineer with 6 yrs in payments — currently building Stripe-like infra for African fintech. Looking for fully-remote senior role in fintech or developer tools." Recruiters read this first.
What to cut
Drop: objective statements, photos, "references available on request", every skill you saw on a course but never used. Recruiters spend 30 seconds — cutting noise wins.