Back-end Portfolio Examples

Short answer

What does a back-end portfolio need?

Back-end reviewers look for a data model that makes sense, correct HTTP semantics, and evidence you have thought about failure.

The underlying structure is the same for every role — one clear claim, two or three verifiable projects, a GitHub profile that supports them, and a CV that links to both. What changes for back-end work is the emphasis, and which projects are worth featuring.

Worked examples

Intermediate: Three projects with a consistent back-end story

Final-year student with a part-time support job. Several assignments and one side project. Applying for graduate back-end roles.

Priya Raman — back-end developer
Final-year computer science student. I build APIs and data pipelines in Python and Go. Available from July 2027.

Projects shown: Society Events Platform, Log Analyser, devkit.

The ten-second read. A final-year student with a clear back-end direction and evidence of engineering judgement, not just completed features.

Read the full breakdown

Advanced: One deep project carrying the portfolio

Self-taught, changing career after four years in another field. No degree, no commercial experience. Applying for junior roles at product companies.

Sam Okonkwo — software engineer
Self-taught developer, previously a logistics analyst. I build distributed back-end systems in Go. Open to junior roles.

Projects shown: queuelite, Observability stack.

The ten-second read. Someone who has built real infrastructure and can reason about failure. The lack of a degree stops being the first thing you notice.

Read the full breakdown

Projects that work for back-end roles

Five briefs from the library that produce the kind of evidence back-end reviewers look for:

Developer Utility CLI — You keep opening a browser tab to convert a timestamp, decode a JWT, format JSON or generate a UUID. Each detour costs a minute and breaks concentration. (1 weekend)
URL Shortener with Analytics — You want short links you control, with click statistics, without handing your traffic data to a third party. (1–2 weekends)
Personal Data API — Your projects, reading list, and now-playing status live across five services. There is no single place to read them from. (1–2 weekends)
Recipe Scraper and Meal Planner — Recipes are scattered across sites wrapped in adverts and life stories. Planning a week of meals means twelve tabs and manual copying. (3 weeks of evenings)
API Gateway with Rate Limiting — A small API needs authentication, rate limiting and request logging, and bolting those into every endpoint by hand does not scale. (3 weeks of evenings)

Full specifications for these and the rest are on the back-end projects page.