Metro: monospace-label resume template
Mono section labels under a rule, dates in tinted chips. Reads native to engineers.
Metro is laid out like well-documented code. Section labels are monospaced capitals, each with a solid rule above it, and every date sits inside a small pale grey chip. The name is a bold sans-serif, and the only colour sits in the rules and the narrow chevron bullets. Engineering managers find it familiar, and so do the recruiters who screen for them.
- Audience
- Engineering · DevOps · Data
- Colour schemes
- Indigo, Ink, Teal
- Photo slot
- No
- Paper
- A4 and US Letter
It suits software, DevOps, data and QA engineers, whether the application goes into an IT services firm's portal or to a product startup where an engineer reads every CV. The date chips make a dense history of short stints, contract roles and internal moves easy to follow. Metro is ATS-safe and costs nothing to download.
Pick Metro if…
- You write code for a living and want the resume to look like it.
- You want visual structure without colour blocks or sidebars.
- Your history is dense, with promotions, contracts or short stints that need clear dates.
- You send one file to large IT employers and small engineering teams alike.
Why the chips and mono labels are safe
- A date chip is ordinary text on a pale fill. A parser reads the dates exactly as you typed them, and the grey box behind them holds no text of its own.
- Section labels are real monospaced text. The rule above each one is a drawn line, so the heading is still recognised as a heading.
- Everything runs in a single column, with role and organisation on one line and the chipped dates at its right end.
- The rules use the scheme's pale rule colour, so they divide the sections without competing with your type.
How much fits on one page
Each date chip adds a sliver of height, and a label with a rule over it needs a little more room than a plain heading, so Metro runs slightly longer than Plainline for identical content. Four to five roles fit on a page. Monospaced labels stay readable at small sizes, so switching to Narrow margins is a fair move before you accept a second page. If you have worked on client projects through a staffing vendor, list the client as the organisation and the vendor in brackets, so each chip shows one clean date range per assignment.
When to use something else
Monospaced labels read as engineering. In finance, law, academia or government they come across as informal, and Ledger or Civic will suit that reader better. To push the technical tone further, with lowercase headings, use Terminal. To tone it down for a mixed audience, Plainline keeps a clean sans-serif without the code references.
Metro works well for these roles
Engineering roles where the tools, versions and dates carry most of the story.
Questions about Metro
- Will the grey date chips confuse an applicant tracking system?
- No. The chip is a light fill behind normal text, and software that extracts text from the PDF gets the dates as characters, the same as in any other layout. What matters more is the format you type: 'Jan 2022 to Mar 2024' or '2022 to 2024' are both easy for a parser to read.
- Where does my GitHub link go on Metro?
- In the contact line. The header has one link field, labelled for LinkedIn but free to hold any address, so many engineers use it for GitHub or a portfolio. A long URL wraps onto a second line instead of shrinking. Individual repositories belong in a Projects entry, next to what you built.
- Can I turn the date chips off?
- Not in Metro; the chips are part of its design. For plain right-aligned dates with a similar technical feel, Terminal sets them in a monospaced face with no fill behind them.