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 .

Solutions Engineer/Deployment Strategist

Traversal · New York

About Traversal 

Traversal is the AI Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) for the enterprise—already trusted by some of the largest companies in the world to troubleshoot, remediate, and even prevent the most complex production incidents. Our mission is to free engineers from endless firefighting and enable them to focus on creative, high-impact work. 

Our roots remain deeply embedded in AI research, and we’re channeling that scientific rigor and creativity into building the premier AI agent lab for the enterprise. Hence, what we’re proudest of is assembling the most talented yet nicest group of individuals, including researchers from MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley, to world-class engineers from industry: Citadel Securities, Cockroach Labs, Datadog, DE Shaw, ServiceNow, Glean, Perplexity, Pinecone, and more, to take on one of the hardest problems for AI to solve. Without the entire team, none of this would be possible.

The Role

As a Solutions Engineer / Deployment Strategist at Traversal, you’ll shape how our AI-native infrastructure product is introduced and deployed inside modern engineering organizations. You’ll guide prospects from initial technical discovery through pilot design, integration planning, and successful rollout.

This is a foundational, customer-facing role at the intersection of technical depth, deployment design, and relationship building. You’ll architect deployment pathways, assess customer environments, and define how Traversal lands and expands within complex enterprises.

You’ll partner closely with CEO, CTO, Product, Engineering, and GTM to translate customer needs into high-value pilot deployments and a repeatable sales motion. You’ll serve as the technical voice in prospect conversations, build resources that support go-to-market efforts, and relay insights that inform roadmap priorities.


If you thrive in high-ownership, high-velocity environments—and want to design and execute modern deployment strategies for AI-native infrastructure—we’d love to meet you.

Responsibilities

  • Lead technical discovery and deliver crisp demos for engineering teams evaluating Traversal.

  • Scope and design pilot evaluations that align with customer environments, workflows, and success criteria.

  • Create deployment playbooks and integration plans that ensure fast, reliable adoption.

  • Build and refine demo environments, technical guides, and internal tools that support both sales and deployment.

  • Collaborate with Product and Engineering to define integration requirements and channel customer insights into roadmap decisions.

  • Drive onboarding and early implementation to secure quick wins and set up long-term success.

  • Stay current on observability, SRE, and AI infrastructure trends to strengthen customer conversations and internal strategy.

Requirements

  • 3+ years in a Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Deployment Strategist, or Solutions Architect role; or relevant engineering experience with strong customer instincts.

  • Proven ability to run technical evaluations end-to-end — building POCs, designing deployment plans, leading demos, and owning the technical workstream of a sales cycle.

  • Strong project and stakeholder management skills, including coordinating across teams and navigating enterprise processes (Security, Legal, Procurement) to drive pilots forward.

  • Ability to engage deeply with technical systems (cloud, APIs, logs/traces) without needing to be a full-time engineer — strong systems intuition and comfort in production environments.

  • Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with shifting priorities.

Nice to Have

  • Familiarity with SRE workflows or observability tools (Datadog, Grafana, New Relic).

  • Experience crafting deployment strategies or “land and expand” motions for infrastructure or AI-native products.

  • Hands-on experience with IaC tools (Terraform) or deployment systems (Kubernetes).

  • Proven ability to create technical enablement content and scale early technical sales motions.

  • Interest in AI infrastructure and the future of agentic systems.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and additional benefits. The U.S. base salary range for this full-time, in-person role in New York is $150,000–$300,000 OTE, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are based on location, level, and role. Individual compensation is determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.

Why You Should Join Us

We’ll make sure you’re fully supported with health insurance, a great tech setup, flexible time off, and plenty of in-office snacks. We offer competitive salary and equity packages, and take thoughtful consideration with every hire on our small, high-impact team.

Traversal is fully in-office, 5 days a week, based in New York near Madison Square Park. We have a collaborative, hard-working culture and are energized by building the future of AI-powered software maintenance.

Working here means owning meaningful parts of the product, having the flexibility to move fast, and learning constantly. This is a place to grow your career, make a real impact, and help define a new category of infrastructure software.