English Vocabulary for Software Engineers

CEFR B1-B2 • Business English • Tickets, code reviews, standups, and design-doc language used in global engineering teams

Why your engineering vocabulary matters

You can write flawless code and still get sidelined in code review if your written English signals "junior" or "non-native" to the reader. The good news: engineering English is a tight, repeatable subset of business English. Once you learn the standard verbs, the standard nouns, and the standard hedging phrases, you sound like a senior engineer regardless of your accent or your years on the team.

This page covers the 60 words and phrases that make the difference, organized by where you actually use them: tickets, pull request reviews, standups, design docs, and incident response.

Tickets and Jira: the verbs that matter

When you write a ticket title, you are setting the entire conversation. Senior engineers favor active, specific verbs. Click each example to hear the rhythm.

Verb	Use it for	Example ticket title
Refactor	Restructure existing code without changing behavior	"Refactor user-auth module to use the new token store"
Migrate	Move data or code from one system to another	"Migrate billing service from MySQL 5.7 to Postgres 15"
Deprecate	Mark old API or feature as no-longer-supported	"Deprecate the v1 search endpoint by Q4"
Backfill	Add missing historical data to a new column or table	"Backfill user_segment for all 2024 signups"
Instrument	Add metrics, tracing, or logging to existing code	"Instrument checkout flow with OpenTelemetry spans"
Harden	Make code more secure or fault-tolerant	"Harden the password reset flow against timing attacks"
Scaffold	Create the initial empty structure of a new feature	"Scaffold the admin dashboard React routes"
Reconcile	Compare two data sources and resolve differences	"Reconcile Stripe charges against our internal ledger"

Code review language: how to give and receive feedback

Code review is where junior engineers most often signal the wrong tone. Direct translations from your native language often land too blunt or too aggressive. Here are the standard hedged phrasings that senior engineers use to make a strong point politely.

Hear the rhythm

"Could we extract this into a helper? It is duplicated in three other files." "Could we" is the standard polite suggestion verb in code review.

"I am wondering if we should add a null check here. What happens when the user has no subscription?" "I am wondering" is softer than "I think" — invites discussion, not defense.

"Nit: variable name could be clearer. Maybe userIdsToRetry instead of arr2?" "Nit" prefix marks a non-blocking suggestion — author can ignore.

"This looks good. One question: have we measured the latency impact of the new lookup?" Approval first, question second. Standard structure for senior reviewers.

"I would push back on the retry-forever behavior. Failures should bubble up to the queue." "I would push back" is the polite-but-firm disagreement formula.

"Have we considered using the existing rate-limiter middleware instead of writing a new one?" "Have we considered" lets you suggest a better path without saying "this is wrong."

"This looks ready to merge to me. Will let Aiyana take a final pass before approving." "Take a final pass" = "do a last review" — common engineer collocation.

Standup vocabulary: what to say in 60 seconds

Standup is structured: yesterday, today, blockers. The vocabulary is also structured. Use these patterns and your standup will sound like a senior engineer's.

Yesterday

"Yesterday I shipped the auth-token rotation patch to production."
"I landed the Postgres index migration overnight — no downtime."
"I cut a release for v3.4.1 with the cache-invalidation fix."
"I paired with Sandeep on the WebSocket reconnect bug for two hours."
"I spiked on the new gRPC client to see if it would work for our load."

Today

"Today I am picking up the email template refactor."
"I am going to dig into why our error rate jumped on Tuesday."
"I will circle back to the design-doc feedback this afternoon."
"I am blocked on the staging environment access from infra — sent a ticket."

Blockers

"I am waiting on Marina for the API spec before I can start."
"I got stuck debugging the flaky test on CI — I will pair with someone today."
"Heads up: the staging DB is slow this morning. Anyone seeing the same?"

Design-doc vocabulary: arguing for an approach

Design docs (also called RFCs or proposals) are where you justify a technical decision. The vocabulary here is more formal than standup, but still hedged. Here are the verb patterns senior engineers use:

"This proposal argues for moving authentication into a dedicated service rather than keeping it in the monolith." "Argues for" = takes a clear position. Standard design-doc opener.

"The tradeoff is increased operational complexity in exchange for tighter blast-radius isolation." "The tradeoff is" = standard senior-engineer formula for honest design.

"We considered writing this synchronously, but the latency budget would not allow it." "We considered ... but" structure shows you thought about alternatives.

"The risk is a small window where stale data could be served — we will mitigate with a 5-second TTL." "The risk is ... we will mitigate" — name the risk, then the plan. Crisp.

"This aligns with the platform team's direction on event-driven workflows." "Aligns with" = "is consistent with" — useful for stakeholder buy-in.

Incident-response vocabulary

When the system is on fire, language is brief, factual, and timestamped. Here are the verbs and nouns you will see in any incident channel.

Term	Meaning	Used in
Triage	Quickly assess severity and assign owner	"Carlos is triaging the alert now."
Mitigate	Reduce impact (not necessarily fix root cause)	"We mitigated by failing over to the EU region."
Roll back	Revert to the previous deploy	"Rolling back to v3.4.0 — error rate dropped to baseline."
Postmortem	Written analysis of root cause and follow-ups	"Postmortem doc due Friday."
Blast radius	Scope of users or systems affected	"Blast radius is limited to EU-2 traffic."
RCA	Root Cause Analysis	"Will write the RCA tomorrow morning."

Pro tip: in an incident channel, every status update should follow the format "<timestamp> — <observation> — <action> — <next step>." For example: "10:42 — Error rate back to baseline. Rolled back v3.4.1. Will keep monitoring for 30 min before declaring resolved."

10 senior-engineer phrases that signal seniority

These phrases come up in design docs, code reviews, and meetings. Native English speakers use them constantly; non-native speakers often miss them entirely. Click to hear each one.

"Let us not boil the ocean — we can scope this to the top three customers first." "Boil the ocean" = try to do everything at once. Always negative.

"This is good enough for now. We can iterate after we see real traffic." "Good enough for now" = explicit anti-perfectionism. Senior signal.

"I want to punt on the rate-limiter design until we have actual traffic numbers." "Punt on" = defer the decision deliberately. Strong senior verb.

"We should timebox the spike to two days. If we have not figured it out, we cut it." "Timebox" = put a hard time limit on. Used for research and prototypes.

Common mistakes by non-native engineers

"I will make a fix" → "I will push a fix" or "I will land a fix." "Make" is correct grammatically but reads as non-native in engineering English.
"Please review my code" → "PTAL when you have a minute" or "RFR" (Request For Review). PTAL = Please Take A Look.
"It does not work" → "It is broken on Firefox" or "It throws a 500." Be specific about what is failing.
"I made the change you said" → "Addressed your feedback in the latest commit." Standard pull-request reply.
"I am ready" → "I am unblocked" in standup. "Unblocked" is the engineer term.

Practice: Test yourself

Tap each question to reveal the answer.

Where to go next

Explore Business English