Key Takeaways

  • 75% of U.S. employers use automated applicant tracking systems to screen resumes before a human reviews them (Harvard Business School & Accenture, 2021)
  • The most common ATS failures are missing keywords, incompatible formatting, and incorrect file types
  • ResumeGeni scores your resume across 8 parsing layers — modeled on the same steps enterprise ATS platforms like Workday, Greenhouse, and Taleo use to evaluate candidates

How ATS Resume Scoring Works

Applicant tracking systems parse your resume into structured data — extracting your name, contact info, work history, skills, and education — then score how well that data matches the job requirements. Many ATS rejections happen because the parser couldn't extract critical fields, not because the candidate wasn't qualified.

LayerWhat It ChecksWhy It Matters
Document extractionFile format, encoding, readabilityCorrupted or image-only PDFs fail immediately
Layout analysisTables, columns, headers, footersMulti-column layouts break field extraction
Section detectionExperience, education, skills headingsNon-standard headings cause sections to be missed
Field mappingName, email, phone, dates, titlesMissing contact info is a common cause of immediate rejection
Keyword matchingJob-specific terms, skills, certificationsKeyword overlap affects recruiter search visibility and ATS scoring
Chronology checkDate ordering, gap detectionReverse-chronological order is expected by most ATS
QuantificationMetrics, numbers, measurable outcomesQuantified achievements help human reviewers and some scoring models
Confidence scoringOverall parse quality and completenessLow-confidence parses get deprioritized in results

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ResumeGeni free?
Yes. ResumeGeni is currently in beta — ATS analysis, scoring, and initial improvement suggestions are free with no signup required. Full guidance and saved reports may require a free account.
What file formats are supported?
PDF, DOCX, DOC, TXT, RTF, ODT, and Apple Pages. PDF and DOCX are recommended for best ATS compatibility.
How is the ATS score calculated?
Your resume is processed through an 8-layer parsing pipeline that extracts structured data the same way enterprise ATS platforms do. The score reflects how completely and accurately your resume can be parsed, plus how well your content matches common ATS ranking criteria.
Can ATS read PDF resumes?
Yes, but not all PDFs are equal. Text-based PDFs parse well. Image-only PDFs (scanned documents) and PDFs with complex tables or multi-column layouts often fail ATS parsing. Our analyzer will flag these issues.
How do I improve my ATS score?
Focus on three areas: use a clean single-column format, include keywords from the job description naturally in your experience bullets, and ensure all sections (contact, experience, education, skills) use standard headings.

ATS Guides & Resources

Built by engineers with 12 years of experience building enterprise hiring technology at ZipRecruiter. Last updated .

Infrastructure Engineer

Bastion · US Remote

About Bastion

Bastion enables financial institutions and enterprises to issue regulated stablecoins, generate revenue on reserves, and expand their ecosystems. Bastion’s platform combines stablecoin issuance, secure custody, and seamless orchestration for cross-border transfers, on/off-ramps, and stablecoin conversions. With Bastion’s platform and APIs, businesses can create and scale their stablecoin network, while optimizing revenue, compliance, and control.

You can check out our Guide for Candidates here to learn more about our work.

Work to Be Done

Instead of a list of requirements, we want to give you a directional look into the first 30, 90, and 180 days on the job.

We are a startup, so the pace is fast and the specific work will change. You need to be okay with that.

If you think this is something you can handle, we will be excited to speak with you.

We are open to US remote and have an office in New York City.

First 30 days: Learn the infrastructure, ship confidently

  • Ramp on AWS architecture, Terraform patterns, Kubernetes setup, CI/CD pipelines, and observability stack

  • Ship a small infrastructure improvement: Terraform module refactor, monitoring enhancement, or CI/CD optimization

  • Add runbooks, alerts, or documentation for the infrastructure areas you touch

  • Outcomes

    • Multiple safe infrastructure changes deployed with verification

    • You understand our core infrastructure patterns and can navigate Terraform, K8s, and AWS resources

    • Updated documentation and/or infrastructure-as-code improvements that help the team

By 90 days: Own an infrastructure domain and raise the bar

  • Take ownership of an infrastructure area: CI/CD pipelines, observability stack, Kubernetes platform, or AWS security/networking

  • Lead a medium-scope project: implementing a reusable Terraform module, right-sizing service resources, or improving deployment reliability

  • Strengthen system reliability with better metrics, alerts, autoscaling policies, and failure recovery mechanisms

  • Outcomes

    • A delivered infrastructure improvement that enhances reliability, reduces cost, or improves developer velocity

    • You're a go-to person for your infrastructure domain

By 180 days: Drive platform-wide impact

  • Lead a platform-wide initiative: single immutable image pipeline, infrastructure standardization, database performance optimization, or security hardening

  • Shape infrastructure direction with design docs, RFC proposals, and mentoring engineering teams

  • Partner with engineering, security, and compliance teams to make pragmatic tradeoffs on reliability, cost, and regulatory requirements

  • Outcomes

    • A multi-sprint infrastructure delivery that improves system-wide reliability, security, or developer experience

    • Clear before/after improvements in deployment speed, cost efficiency, or operational stability

    • Patterns and tooling that enable engineers to ship faster and safer

Some problems you might work on

  • Building reusable Terraform modules that standardize service deployment patterns across dev, sandbox, and prod

  • Implementing single immutable image pipelines with built-in security scanning and promotion workflows

  • Right-sizing Kubernetes workloads and autoscaling policies to reduce cost while maintaining reliability

  • Designing and implementing database monitoring and performance optimization strategies

  • Hardening AWS infrastructure with security best practices: IAM policies, network segmentation, secrets management, and audit logging

  • Building observability infrastructure that gives engineers fast feedback on system health and performance

  • Improving CI/CD reliability and speed through better caching, parallelization, and failure handling

Our typical stack

  • Languages: Go and TypeScript/Node.js; some services in Rust as needed

  • Infrastructure-as-Code: Terraform

  • Cloud & Compute: AWS (ECS, EKS, Lambda, EC2), Kubernetes, Docker

  • CI/CD: GitHub Actions, container registries, automated testing and deployment pipelines

  • Data: Postgres (RDS), Redis, Kafka, Snowflake

  • Workflow Management: Temporal

  • Security: AWS Nitro Enclaves for hardware-backed key isolation, IAM policies, secrets management

  • Observability: Datadog, Grafana, Sentry, CloudWatch

  • Incident Management: Incident.io

Bastion provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, and placement. Bastion participates in E-Verify to authorize eligibility of employment in the United States.