We spend a lot of time looking at developer portfolios. It's kind of our thing — we built a platform around them, so naturally we've become obsessed with what makes a good one tick.

And honestly? Most of them blend together. You see the same structure over and over: a name at the top, "Full Stack Developer" underneath it, a grid of technology logos, and three projects with barely any context. It's not that these portfolios are bad, exactly. They just don't give anyone a reason to care.

Then every once in a while, one stops you cold. You get it immediately — who this person is, what they're about, why they'd be great to work with. And it usually comes down to the same handful of things done well.

Here's what we've noticed.

1. A headline that actually says something

"Full Stack Developer" is not a headline. It's a job category. It's like walking up to someone at a party and saying "I work in an office."

Your headline is the first thing someone reads, and if it's generic, it's probably the last thing too. You've got maybe one sentence to make a hiring manager curious enough to keep scrolling.

Here's the difference:

"Full Stack Developer"

"I build fintech APIs that handle 50,000 transactions per hour without dropping a single one."

The second one is doing a lot of work. It tells you domain, scale, and what this person cares about — all in one line.

You don't have to be clever about it. Just be specific. What kind of stuff do you build? What are you actually good at? Lead with that.

2. Projects that tell people why they should care

This is the one that trips up almost everyone. Developers list projects like items on a receipt: title, two-line description, GitHub link. Done.

The problem is there's zero context. A hiring manager sees your project and has no idea why it exists, what was difficult, or whether it actually worked.

For each project you feature, try to cover three things:

What was the problem? And not the technical version — the human one. "Users were waiting 8 seconds for search results" hits way harder than "I optimized a database query."

What did you do about it? Be specific about your choices. Why this framework and not that one? Why this database? Hiring managers aren't quizzing you. They want to see how you think through decisions.

What happened? Most portfolios just... stop here. But the result is the part that actually matters. "Reduced search latency from 8 seconds to 200ms, and user retention went up 34%." That one sentence does more than a whole page of technical specs.

You won't always have hard numbers, and that's fine. "The client's team started using it daily" or "It hit 2,000 GitHub stars in three months" — those work too. Just close the loop somehow.

3. Code that's actually worth clicking into

If the person reviewing your portfolio is a developer themselves, they're going to click your GitHub link. Count on it.

It's not about having a wall of green on your contribution graph or hundreds of repos. Nobody cares about that. What matters is having at least one or two repositories where someone can see how you actually write code.

Pick your best ones and put some effort into the READMEs. Explain what the project does, how to run it, and why you built it. That alone is more than most developers bother with. It shows you can communicate about code — not just produce it.

And if your best work is proprietary and you can't share it? That's totally normal. Describe the architecture instead. Sketch out a system diagram. Talk through the decisions you made. Hiring managers get it — NDAs are a thing. An empty portfolio, though, is harder to forgive.

4. A tech stack you can actually scan quickly

Recruiters and hiring managers are often checking for specific things. "Do they know Kubernetes?" "Have they worked with TypeScript?" They want to find out fast.

List your technologies clearly. Group them — languages, frameworks, databases, tools, platforms — so someone can scan the whole thing in a few seconds.

One thing worth mentioning: don't list every technology you've ever touched. List the ones you'd feel confident picking up on day one of a new job. A focused list of 12-15 tools you actually know is way more compelling than a sprawling list of 40 things you used once in a tutorial.

5. A bio that sounds like you actually wrote it

"Passionate developer with 5+ years of experience leveraging cutting-edge technologies to deliver scalable solutions."

Your eyes just glazed over, right? That's what hiring managers feel reading about 90% of developer bios. It sounds like it was generated by feeding a LinkedIn profile into a blender.

Write your bio the way you'd describe yourself to someone over coffee. Two or three sentences. Who you are, what you work on, what you're looking for.

Something like: "I'm a backend engineer who's spent the last four years building payment infrastructure at startups. I'm pretty obsessive about reliability and clean APIs. Looking for a remote role where I can work on problems that actually matter at scale."

That sounds like a person. Someone a hiring manager can picture on their team. Someone worth getting on a call with.

Oh, and if you've got remote work experience, say so. Don't bury it. In 2026, that's a real advantage.

6. Links that connect to the rest of your work

Your portfolio shouldn't be a dead end. Think of it as a starting point that connects to everything else you've done.

GitHub shows you actually write code. Not just that you claim to.

LinkedIn validates your work history and gives a bit of social proof through connections and recommendations.

Writing — a blog, technical articles, even detailed Stack Overflow answers — shows you can explain complex ideas in plain language. This is wildly underrated in hiring. Companies are constantly looking for engineers who can actually communicate.

Community stuff — Twitter/X, Discord communities, conference talks, whatever — shows you're plugged into the broader ecosystem. That you take the craft seriously beyond just your day job.

Each of these links gives a hiring manager one more reason to move you from "maybe" to "let's talk."

7. A way to actually get in touch

This is the easiest item on the list and somehow the most commonly bungled.

We've seen developer portfolios with no email, no contact form, nothing. The only way to reach the person is to track them down on LinkedIn and hope for the best. At that point, what was even the point of building the portfolio?

Put your email somewhere visible. Add a contact form as a backup. If you prefer a specific way of being contacted, just say so.

You've built this thing to make someone want to reach out. Don't make it hard for them to actually do it.

That's pretty much it

You don't need flashy animations. You don't need to spend weeks agonizing over the spacing between your project cards. You really don't.

You need a headline that hooks, projects that prove you solve real problems, and a way for someone to contact you. Everything else is bonus.

The developers who land the best remote roles aren't always the most talented ones. They're the ones who make it really, really easy for a hiring manager to see their talent. There's a difference, and it matters more than most people realize.

Build the portfolio. Ship it. Update it every couple months. Then get back to writing code.

7 Things Every Developer Portfolio Must Have