Uber Product Manager (PM) Interview Guide

This guide focuses on interviewing for the senior PM levels (L5A), but it also applies to other levels.

tl;dr

Imagine a snowy winter evening in Paris, where 2 engineers aren’t able to hail a taxi after a conference. This momentary inconvenience is what led to the genesis of Uber. Founded in 2009, Uber has been on a wild ride ever since. Today, the tech startup has transformed into a full-blown ecosystem that moves people, groceries, packages, and even shipping containers.

The San Francisco-based company has disrupted personal transportation and, in the process, become the poster child of the gig economy. Uber offers the following services:

• Ride-hailing: Its primary product, connecting riders with drivers for transportation.
• Uber Eats: A food delivery app that allows users to order meals from various restaurants via the app.
• Uber Freight: A platform for connecting shippers and carriers in the freight industry.
• Uber for Business: A solution for corporate travel and employee mobility.

Product managers (PMs) at Uber enable and advance the company’s mission: “Reimagine the way the world moves for the better.” They are ideal wranglers and data ninjas who solve problems that affect people’s everyday commute needs—and more. At its core, Uber is a data-driven and data-loving company. Product managers are expected to be on top of success metrics for every experiment, initiative, and feature suggestion, and you’d sense the data obsession even during the interview process.

Uber’s culture can be summarized with an internal saying that goes, “Don’t be a renter, be an owner.” It reflects a core mindset: when you spot a problem or come up with an idea, you’re expected to take initiative and drive it forward. Ownership at Uber means stepping up, not waiting for someone else to act. Ready to level up?

What does an Uber PM do?

PMs at Uber operate in the "real world" rather than just "online," which makes the role at Uber unique among top tech companies. As a PM, you’d be responsible for driving the end-to-end strategy, execution, and impact of a specific product or component within the broader Uber ecosystem. PMs take ownership of critical areas that directly influence core company metrics. To achieve this, they work closely with design, data science, engineering, strategy & ops, and other partners across businesses and geographies.

Here are some examples of what senior Uber PMs work on for different teams:

• Identity: Enable a seamless experience for IAM (Identity and Access Management) by designing identity solutions and scalable, distributed systems. Create platform features to ensure secure linking of a third-party identity and Uber.
• Merchant: Build user-friendly developer interfaces and tools, reliable integration capabilities, and applications that work seamlessly with Uber delivery platforms. Develop the vision for an API integration platform and a suite of tools that can scale across Uber.
• Consumer growth: Identify and execute cross-platform opportunities to convert Uber riders into Uber Eats customers. Drive the end-to-end strategy and roadmap to deepen engagement across the Uber ecosystem—retain users, increase order frequency, and enhance the overall user experience.
• Safety: Drive the development and implementation of safety features and initiatives to make the Uber app a secure option for users. Conduct research and analysis to identify user needs and preferences related to safety. Stay updated on industry regulations and best practices related to safety and ensure compliance within the Uber platform.

Uber PMs are knee-deep in data and technical specifics. They are biased toward action and never hesitate to roll up their sleeves and tackle something hands-on. As a PM, you’re expected to be a great collaborator, a master disambiguator (one who simplifies things), and someone who constantly pushes toward clarity and delivery.

The average total compensation for Uber PMs:

• Associate PM: $155K
• PM I (L3): $178.5K
• PM II (L4): $267.1K
• Senior PM (L5A): $360.5K
• Lead PM (L5B): $529.4K
• Group PM (L6): $719.1K

Before you apply

• Breeze through the interview with Exponent’s Product Management Interviews course.
• Practice with our Top Uber Product Manager Interview Questions.
• Strengthen your technical PM prowess with the Technical Questions for PMs course.

Interview process

The Uber interview process is extremely challenging, to say the least. You’ll be asked to solve mini or full-blown cases in 5 out of the 8 rounds, sometimes unexpectedly. That said, interviewers are collaborative and conversational compared to other FAANG companies. The whole process will have a total of 8 rounds.

There’s some variance between loops for different Uber teams, and this is the closest approximation we could find to a typical Uber loop:

• Round 1: Recruiter phone screen
• Round 2: Hiring manager screen
• Final onsite loop
  • Round 3: Uber Jam
  • Round 4: Engineering screen
  • Round 5: Data science screen
  • Round 6: VP of Product screen
  • Round 7: Design screen
  • Round 8: Lead PM screen

Round 1: Recruiter phone screen

The recruiter round at Uber is a 30-minute chat, which is both level-setting and surface-level technical. Be prepared to deliver an elevator pitch. Expect questions about your previous product stints, most impactful features, and some follow-ups. Uber recruiters will also tell you about the entire interview process, timeline, and so on. So, this is a good time to keep questions about the entire loop handy.

Sample questions:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Why are you interested in joining Uber?
• What are you looking for in a PM role?
• What motivates you in your next career move?
• What’s the highest-impact feature you have shipped? What are the metrics you used to measure success?

Round 2: Hiring manager screen

The hiring manager screen is 45-minutes long, and includes a mix of behavioral questions and a case study prompt. In some cases, the screening can also be conducted by a fellow PM. The interviewer will spend around 5–10 minutes understanding your profile, and the rest of the ~40 minutes on a case. Towards the end, they will also explain Uber’s vision for the role.

For the first section, have a “60 seconds to wow” pitch ready, and be prepared to provide clear and in-depth explanations of each experience you want to highlight. Think about anecdotes that show off how you were customer-obsessed, dealt with ambiguity, and had a growth mindset in approaching the task at hand. For the problem-solving section, the case will be one that Uber faces as an org. It can be a product sense or analytics prompt or just an org-wide issue that the interviewer wants you to take a stab at.

Sample questions:

• Describe the strategy of your last product.
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• The Uber office has a limited number of parking spaces, but the demand among employees exceeds the available supply. Currently, parking is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. How would you address this situation?
• We're considering introducing a new ad placement on our app's homepage. Should we do it?
• According to one figure, there are more Uber drop-offs at the airport than Uber pick-ups. Why is this the case, and what can you do to improve it inside the product?
• Can you tell me how you would estimate how many riders are potentially at one spot during peak traffic?

If you advance past this round, you'll receive a take-home presentation assignment centered around a current challenge Uber is facing. After you submit the assignment, it will be evaluated, and if successful, you'll be invited to the final onsite round, where you'll present your work during the Uber Jam.

Final onsite loop

Round 3: Uber Jam

This round is unique to Uber and carries a lot of weight. For the Uber Jam, you’ll be presenting your take-home assignment to the hiring manager and a junior/peer PM. It’s a 45-minute round, and you’ll have around 25–30 minutes for the presentation—the rest of it will be questions from panelists. However, there will not be any other candidates included in your jam session, just you.

Expect a lot of if-this-then-what questions, as the interviewers are trying to assess your problem-solving approach. Consider this round as a ping-pong of ideas, where you’ll be evaluated on how you work with others and how you receive critical feedback in a work setting.

For your presentation, think about the problem holistically. Often, there is more than one party involved (such as drivers and riders for Uber rides and restaurants, couriers, and consumers for Uber Eats). Think about the problem from all perspectives. Any changes you make could potentially impact another party. Further, think about the safety of the users and customers. Consider all risks, both technical and those that affect the real lives of the users (e.g., drivers holding on to too much cash and driving around with large sums of money). If there are short-term, low-hanging fruits that you can quickly tackle, call them out. But do not lose sight of the bigger picture and the long-term solutions.

Finally, you’ll get brownie points if you use data to make certain tradeoffs and showcase that you can build an MLP (minimum lovable product) quickly. Remember, Uber likes to move fast, so you should have a plan that allows for fast movement and shipment. With that in mind, present solutions that can also scale easily.

Practice for prompts like:

• How would you 4x the adoption of Uber grocery?
• How would you reward long-term drivers?
• How can Uber Eats improve engagement in the suburbs?
• Design an app for drivers to understand how they're doing.

If you qualify for this round, the hiring manager will put together a team of panelists who will interview you for the remaining part of the onsite. Usually, it will be cross-functional stakeholders you’d be working closely with, including engineers, data scientists, designers, and marketers, including PM leaders, among others. Needless to say, this looks different for every team/product org.

Round 4: Engineering screen

The screen is led by an engineering counterpart. It is a deeply technical conversation that evaluates your understanding of technical aspects such as system design, architecture, or algorithms. The conversation might start with basic behavioral questions, but the majority of the 45 minutes will focus on a system-design case study related to your role. There will be no coding required for this.

For example, if you’re applying within the rides team, it’s a good idea to know about how the ride algorithm works from a technical point of view. Research the Uber tech stack and the app's basic architecture. List the technical challenges you look out for, how you prioritize tasks, and how you troubleshoot problems with engineers.

Sample questions:

• Tell me about a time when you disagreed with engineers and designers on your team. What did you do?
• Explain to a five-year-old how UberPool’s pooling algorithm works.
• How would you design different services for gift card redemption?
• Open the Uber app and talk me through the information architecture.
• Design a leadership dashboard showing the top 10 profitable cities for Uber across all business verticals.
• What parameters would you consider when designing UberPool?
• Describe what happens when you type a URL into your browser and press Enter.
• What happens when you request a ride on Uber? Is there a way to pre-process anything?

Since Uber interviewers are conversational, expect follow-up questions for the prompt, “How would you design different services for gift card redemption?” to be like, “How do you prevent fraud in gift cards? How would you hide latency, and what are the product implications?”

Additionally, you might also be asked technical concept questions like:

• Do you know Kafka?
• Do you know what an API is and the different types of APIs?
• Do you know the difference between synchronous and asynchronous services?
• If a service were asynchronous, what would the synchronous one need to do?

Round 5: Data science screen

During this round, you’ll chat with a senior or lead data scientist. The conversation will largely be around how you work with data scientists to make data-driven decisions. This round is similar to Facebook's execution round, which focuses on metrics, ROI estimation, and root cause analysis, among others.

Sample questions:

• Talk about a product you worked on and how you designed it around data limitations.
• A majority of customer turnover is caused by late deliveries. What data do we look at for a food delivery app to prove this hypothesis?
• How would you design an experiment to A/B test something?
• How have you changed an opinion or direction using data?

Round 6: VP of Product screen

The VP of Product screen will focus primarily on product strategy and analytics. You’ll be presented with another case study and asked what you think about the problem, use cases, and how you would launch it in a new market.

They assess your ability to reason about competitive landscapes and high-level product direction decisions. The key to success in these interviews is going broad, then deep. This means setting a broad outline with the goals of the product, and then drilling deeper into actions and metrics. With regard to metrics, try employing the GAME framework, as demonstrated in this PM lesson. Ultimately, you have to be methodical and show that you make data-driven decisions.

Sample questions:

• Gross ride bookings are down. Investigate this metric to learn why it is down.
• How do you choose between launching two features? Which metrics would you monitor?
• Design a free product. How would you monetize it?
• How would you reduce cancellations on Uber?
• How would you improve pickups and drop-offs through Uber during large events with over 10,000 people?
• How would you improve user engagement on Netflix?

Round 7: Product design screen

During this screen, you’ll be chatting with the Director of Design or a Lead Designer from your team. Out of all the onsite rounds, this focuses most on behavioral and cross-functional alignment. Expect questions that assess your communication style, including your experience presenting complex ideas to designers, managing stakeholders, and gaining buy-in for your design approach.

Sample questions:

• How do you manage stakeholder expectations?
• How do you work with designers? Discuss your approach.
• What are some of the design principles you often apply while working with wireframes?
• Talk about a product whose design impressed you. Why did it impress you?
• What is your biggest weakness? What is your biggest achievement?
• What is the biggest frustration as a PM?

Round 8: Lead PM screen

This round, led by a Lead PM, is considered one of the hardest. While the interviewer may lead with some behavioral questions, there will be one last case study to solve. The prompt will be around product execution and analytics. Be prepared to face pushback on any assumptions you make. Take your time to structure the problem. Successful candidates consider all variables and scenarios before diving into the nitty-gritty details.

Sample questions:

• What would you have done differently in your last product launch?
• How would you measure the success of ordering rides for other people? What are the data points you’d rely on? Who would offer you more reliable data—the driver or the rider?
• On Uber, drivers are abandoning a neighborhood. What's the best way to find out what's going on?
• How would you improve the airport passengers' experience to address the pain point of time spent at the airport?
• You're a PM at Netflix tasked with launching their first ads program. How would you approach this?
• Uber has about 40% fake reviews. How can you approach the issue as a PM at Uber?

Additional resources

• Book a 1:1 coaching session with Uber interviewers.
• Check out the Uber values page.

FAQs about the Uber PM interview

How should I prepare for an Uber PM interview?

To succeed in the Uber PM interview, prepare for the following:

• Get constructive feedback by practicing mock interviews with peers.
• To take it up a notch, read the Uber Engineering blog.
• Brainstorm and structure new product ideas with Exponent’s Product Design course.

How much does a PM at Uber earn?

The expected total compensation for Uber PMs:

• Associate PM: $155K
• PM I (L3): $178.5K
• PM II (L4): $267.1K
• Senior PM (L5A): $360.5K
• Lead PM (L5B): $529.4K
• Group PM (L6): $719.1K

How long is the Uber PM interview process?

The complete Uber PM interview process takes about 3–12 weeks from the recruiter screen to the final offer.