Cover letter template
A cover letter is worth writing when it says something the resume can't: why this role, why this company, and what you'd do first. This template keeps the formal scaffolding out of your way so you can spend the space on that.
Use this templateHow it works
- 1
Open the template
Click Use this template to load the letter.
- 2
Write your letter
Replace the address block and the body paragraphs.
- 3
Download the PDF
Click Download PDF and attach it to your application.
What's in the template
Jordan Avery
Chicago, IL · jordan.avery@example.com · (555) 010-2233
3 March 2026
Hiring Team
Northwind Payments
220 Market Road, Chicago, IL
---
Dear Hiring Team,
I'm writing about the Senior Backend Engineer role. I've spent the last six years on payment and billing systems, most recently rebuilding a settlement pipeline that had grown from a nightly batch job into a four-hour bottleneck — it now completes in under a minute.
What draws me to Northwind specifically is the public work on idempotency in your engineering blog. The approach you described is close to what we landed on after a painful year of duplicate-charge incidents, and I'd like to work somewhere that has already made that decision rather than arguing for it again.
In the first ninety days I'd expect to be useful in three places: reducing the on-call load, tightening the reconciliation tests, and documenting the ledger invariants that new engineers currently learn by breaking them.
I'd welcome the chance to talk. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Jordan AveryThis is the markdown the editor loads. Everything is editable.
Frequently asked questions
- How long should a cover letter be?
- Under one page — three or four short paragraphs. If it runs longer, the specifics are usually being crowded out by throat-clearing.
- Should I send it as a PDF?
- Yes, unless the posting says otherwise. A PDF renders the same everywhere, where a word-processor file may not.
- Can I match it to my resume?
- Choose the same font family and base size in the settings panel and the two will sit together as a set.
Converting this to a PDF
This template is plain markdown, so it converts the same way any document here does. convert markdown to PDF covers the page setup, typography and export options in more detail.