Uber Software Engineer Interview Guide

Uber is more than a ride-sharing company. It’s a global technology platform focused on solving some of the world’s toughest mobility challenges. If you’re interested in building technology to enable people, goods, and services to get from point A to point B in an efficient way, software engineering (SWE) at Uber could be a good fit for you.

According to its latest annual report, Uber is focused on three segments:

Mobility: Helping customers get to where they need to be through ridesharing, carsharing, rentals, public transit, and more.
Delivery: Allowing customers to discover the best local goods and have them delivered quickly and conveniently. This segment includes Uber Eats, Postmakes, Drizly, and Cornershop.
Freight: Uber’s Freight offering comprises an on-demand platform connecting Shippers and Carriers in a digital marketplace to automate and accelerate logistics around the world.

Underlying each of these segments is a talented engineering team that builds and operates Uber’s proprietary technology.

This guide was written with the help of a software engineer at Uber.

What does an Uber SWE do?

Uber engineers collaborate and partner with stakeholders and other engineering teams to build and maintain features, services, and platforms.

Similar to other major tech companies, engineers at Uber are responsible for supporting the entire project lifecycle. Uber Engineers are involved from the very beginning of the projects they work on—from idea iteration and feedback to drafting the design and architectural proposal, to writing code, to finally supporting the rollout including monitoring and analytics. Engineers do not fully rely on a traditional technical architect for design nor a dedicated quality engineer or software development engineer in test (SDET) for testing. SWEs at Uber are expected to fulfill those roles themselves.

Junior to intermediate engineering roles are more focused on contributing to projects that fall within their team, while senior engineers are expected to mentor less-experienced designers, lead projects that span across multiple dependent teams, and form deeper connections with cross-functional partners, such as with product, TPM, and UX designers.

Engineers at Uber execute on three key principles:

Software Engineering: At Uber, this includes writing high-quality code, testing, and building documentation with software engineering best practices. This requires proficiency in data structures, algorithms, frameworks, and common design patterns.
Design and Architecture: Solving business and engineering problems with thought-out designs and architecture by leveraging industry standard design principles, literacy in understanding limitations of current systems and newly proposed systems as well as insight into potential future requirements to evaluate trade-off decisions that promote speed and future adoption.
Collaboration and Leadership: Working closely with other engineering teams and cross-functional roles to support others and receive support where needed.

Although the interview process at Uber is standardized across the company, each team recruits and interviews internally. There are many teams to join—for example, a posting for a Security Software Engineer II, which falls under the product security sub-team, lists the following tasks:

Architect, design, and implement (Golang) security tools and services to automate product security processes.
Perform security vulnerability validation and revalidation reviews to confirm and assess security implications of reported security findings from our automated vulnerability programs
Perform code reviews, security design reviews and other internal consultancy on an as-needed basis

Meanwhile, a posting for a Staff Engineer on the backend sub-team lists the following:

Design, develop, and maintain robust and scalable software solutions.
Collaborate with product managers, cross engineering teams, data scientists and other partners to gather requirements and translate them into technical specifications.
Identify opportunities and lead the entire development lifecycle end-to-end, from architecture design and coding to testing and deployment.
Conduct thorough code reviews, offering constructive feedback to maintain high code quality and elevate coding standards.

What are the typical job requirements for an Uber SWE?

Excluding entry-level roles for new graduates, Uber SWE candidates will typically need:

Education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in computer science, engineering, or a similar field. Without this background, then a minimum of 1-3 years of work experience is expected.
Specialized Experience: At least 1-2 years of experience in the specialization. For example, backend engineers should have experience in languages like Go, Java, Python. Knowledge of distributed systems and scaling is preferred. For a web engineer, specialized experience could include Javascript and/or CSS with modern js framework experience (i.e React, Vue, Angular.)

Because each team hires independently, it’s hard to pinpoint a single set of requirements. Here are the basic requirements listed for the Security Software Engineer II mentioned above:

Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field.
Programming skills in at least one of: Go, Java, Python, JavaScript, etc.
3+ years of relevant security engineering, security assessment experience in a product development role.
Familiarity with industry-standard threat modeling, risk modeling and vulnerability classification.
Experience finding and fixing common infrastructure, application or mobile security vulnerabilities.
Experience in at least one security domain: application security, mobile security, cloud security, systems security, program analysis, or reverse engineering.

The requirements for the Backend Staff engineer are more advanced though less specific:

BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent experience
7+ years of experience in software engineering
Experience with one of the following programming languages: Java, Go, C/C++, Python. Good scripting skills and ability to pick up new ones.

Recommendations before you apply for Uber SWE roles

Get to know the different teams hiring at Uber. Spend some time monitoring Uber’s careers page. Which team best suits your experience?
Revamp your resume. Communication skills are critical at Uber and your resume is the perfect way to demonstrate this from the very beginning. Make sure you can tell a coherent, compelling story around all the experiences listed on your resume, and why you’re an ideal candidate for Uber.
Practice with mock interviews. Exponent's coaching services are your best friend. Don’t limit your pool of mock partners to other SWEs and peers in tech—grab a non-tech friend and describe the most recent project you spearheaded. Communicating effectively with both your peers in engineering and non-technical collaborators will be critical for your growth on-the-job.
Lean on your community. Take what you learned from your team research and connect with a few Uber SWEs on Exponent or LinkedIn and ask them about their experiences. They’ve gone through what you’re going through now, and they’re great sources of information and support.

Interview Process

Uber’s SWE interview loop is fairly standard. You’ll undergo:

A phone screen with a recruiter
An optional online technical assessment
A technical phone screen
An onsite consisting of four to six rounds depending on seniority

Overall, the process is quick. Expect a final decision in three to six weeks.

Recruiter Phone Screen

This is a general screening, typically lasting for 45 minutes to an hour with some time reserved at the end for your questions. The purpose of this call is to ensure that both candidate and hiring team are aligned on expectations and general fit so as not to waste either party’s time.

The Uber recruiter will explain the role and describe the hiring team in more detail, and ask questions to gauge whether the candidate is interested and their experience is relevant to this role.

Prepare to:

Describe your technical experience.
Answer questions around what motivates you, and why Uber is a great fit.
Describe what you’re looking for in a SWE role.

In more rare circumstances, the recruiter may pass the candidate to another role that is a better fit.

(Optional) Online Technical Assessment

Depending on your experience, you may be given a self-guided technical assessment consisting of an easy or medium-level data structures and algorithm questions.

You will face a series of questions, input your answers, and receive a score at the end. You aren’t required to score 100%, but you should be able to answer the question.

Technical Phone Screen

Next is the technical phone screen.

This is similar to the technical assessment (if you were given one). The goal here is to assess general software engineering skills before pulling the trigger on an onsite round. You will be connected with an Uber SWE and given another coding question using CodeSignal.

Senior-level phone screens may also include questions about your past work experience, particularly on the design and/or architecture of the project. We’ll cover how to prepare for each question type below.

Nervous? Exponent’s question database has hundreds of sample questions and answers to help you prepare for data structures and algorithms coding questions.

Onsite Interview

If you pass the technical screen, you will be scheduled for an onsite interview consisting of four to six rounds. At Uber, these may be scheduled back-to-back, but it’s possible they’ll be scheduled over multiple days.

Entry-level to intermediate SWEs will face:

A general coding round including basic data structures and algorithms questions.
A specialized coding round similar to the general round, but with more domain-specific questions.
A design and architecture round.
A behavioral round assessing collaboration and leadership skills.

More experienced candidates may also undergo a technical retrospective.

Each round will be 1:1 and your interviewers will be members of the team you’re interviewing with.

General Coding: Data Structures and Algorithms

The first technical round will be similar to the technical screen. You will be given an easy-to-medium coding questions, and be asked to solve it.

If you’re in-person, you’ll do this on a whiteboard. If virtual, you’ll use CodeSignal.

At Uber, you’re encouraged to choose the coding language of your choice. Be sure to explain your code and strive for quality, though perfect code is not required.

Expect to spend 30-40 minutes solving the question and going through a few test cases prepared by your interviewer. Then, you can expect to spend 5-10 minutes answering questions about your past experience. The last 5-10 minutes are reserved for you to ask your interview questions about the job, their experience, and life at Uber.

Because you’ll be interviewing with potential team mates, this is a great opportunity to connect and glean some “insider knowledge” about what it’s like to work at Uber.

Below, we’ll share detailed advice for acing both coding rounds as well as the system design round, behavioral questions, and the technical retrospective round for senior candidates.

Specialized Coding: Domain-specific Questions

The next round runs just like the previous round, but instead of a completely generic coding question, you’ll get something more domain-specific.

For example, for a backend position, the question may be either an algorithmic coding problem or a data structure problem such as “implement a parking lot data structure.” For a position with the web or mobile teams, you may be asked to code a specific component or widget, such as a stopwatch.

System Design and Architecture

This is a classic system design round.

You’ll receive a general design problem such as “design Instagram.” Interviewers are assessing your ability to navigate a project design, including clarifying edge cases and requirements, making design tradeoffs, and building scalable solutions.

You’ll spend up to ~40 minutes whiteboarding your solution (using the whiteboard feature in CodeSignal if remote) and spend the remainder of the time answering follow-ups and asking your own questions.

Behavioral: Collaboration and Leadership

Uber’s behavioral interviewer is industry-standard. Typically, your hiring manager will lead this round, which consists of both experiential questions on your work history and hypothetical questions meant to evaluate soft skills and assess for culture and team fit.

Practice describing your technical experience with emphasis on your unique contributions and the impact your actions had on the team, the company, and customers. Consider what drives you. How do your personal motivations align with Uber’s mission?

Technical Retrospective (for Senior Candidates)

A technical retrospective (“retro”) is a deep-dive conversation where you will delve into a specific project from your resume, exploring it from various angles. You can think of this as a system design interview tailored to a real project from your past.

You'll discuss the nitty-gritty of your past project, including its requirements, features, and the technical tradeoffs you encountered. Be sure to emphasize your contribution (as opposed to the team’s) and the effect that it had on the business.

Senior engineers are expected to be mentors and thought leaders, so be prepared for questions about any conflicts or challenging team dynamics you faced during the project. Describe how you handled these situations and the valuable lessons you learned from them.

You won't be asked to code, but you should expect to cover fundamental software concepts and dive into the dependencies and execution details of your project. This is an opportunity to showcase your grasp of CS fundamentals, your experience with software design and architecture, and your ability to scale systems.

Sample Interview Questions

Data Structures and Algorithms

The online technical assessment, technical screen, general coding, and specialized coding rounds at Uber will all assess your CS fundamentals and your knowledge of data structures and algorithms.

The best way to prepare for coding questions is to get lots of practice. Begin your prep by reviewing common data structures such as:

Review key algorithms as well:

Then, start coding.

Uber expects you to spend 30-40 minutes solving a single coding question, so be sure to time yourself. Questions range from easy to medium-level difficulty. If you’re new to coding questions, it helps to watch real SWEs at companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft work through coding questions in a realistic setting. For example:

Then, try your hand at these sample problems:

You can watch many more mocks in Exponent’s Software Engineering interview course here.

Here are a few tips for success in coding interviews.

Code in your best language. Don’t choose Haskell or Go if you’re unfamiliar with these but want to impress. Interviewers want to see you at your best.
Start with a naive solution, then optimize for space-time complexity. It often helps to start with the brute force solution. Explain your process to your interviewer, remembering to point out the inefficiencies, and optimize later in your answer.
When in doubt, stick to the standard library. However, if you’re coding in Python and get a question that can be beautifully answered with Numpy, be sure to mention that to your interviewer to demonstrate your familiarity with the language.
Articulate your thought process. Always!

System Design

Every SWE candidate at Uber should prepare for a system design interview.

Recent Uber interviewees report that, for intermediate level engineers and below, Uber asks SWE candidates to design simple high-level systems. You likely won’t face anything Uber-specific (though it doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with Uber’s architecture).

Here are some examples of common system design questions:

Interviewers aren’t looking for a perfect solution, but they are interested in how you think. You’ll be assessed on your ability to:

Analyze a complex problem
Design the blueprint of an architecture that makes sense
Discuss multiple solutions and requirements
Weigh the pros and cons to reach a workable solution

You’ll have an hour total, but you should aim to save the last 15 minutes for follow-ups and to ask your own questions. Follow this 5-step framework to ace your system design round at Uber:

First, define the problem. Ask clarifying questions until you thoroughly understand the task and have a concrete set of requirements.
Then, design a high-level system. Start simple and expand later if needed.
Deep-dive into the component-level decisions. Explain each component choice, the APIs, and the data model. Whiteboard your design, articulating your thought process throughout.
Identify bottlenecks and scale your system.
Finally, review your design. Run through your requirements again, suggest any changes you’d make given more information, summarize tradeoffs, and answer any questions.

If you haven’t interviewed recently, your CS and system design fundamentals may be rusty. Check out Exponent’s Fundamentals of System Design course for a thorough refresher and plenty of real-world mock interviews.

Behavioral

You’ll get a few behavioral questions during your recruiter screen and at the end of the technical rounds as interviewers get to know you, but the bulk of behavioral questions will be asked in the collaboration and leadership round.

Typically, your hiring manager leads this interview, so be sure to prepare some questions for them as you practice articulating your own story.

To prepare for behavioral interviews, first review Uber’s mission and core values:

Go get it. Bring the mindset of a champion.
Trip obsessed. Make magic in the marketplace.
Build with heart. We care.
Stand for safety. Safety never stops
See the forest and the trees. Know the details that matter
One Uber. Bet on something bigger.
Great minds don’t think alike. Diversity makes us stronger.

As you practice common behavioral questions, ask yourself:

What do I do to ensure that my actions align with my team, and my company?
Why do I want to work at Uber? What about Uber’s vision resonates best with me?
How have I shown leadership in my past projects and personal relationships?
How have I been an effective communicator and collaborator? What has my experience taught me, and what will I bring to the table at Uber?

There are no right answers to behavioral questions, but we recommend practicing enough to be succinct and clear, but not robotic. Interviews want to see authenticity and passion here, so don’t be shy!

Don’t forget to check out Exponent’s behavioral question bank and the behavioral interviewing for SWEs course. There are hundreds of questions and answers ready for practice.

Technical Retro

Senior candidates should prepare for a technical retrospective on a past project.

The technical retrospective assesses technical knowledge and decision-making, but there is a strong behavioral component as well. Expect questions on how you gathered information before making decisions, the group dynamics, and how you balanced stakeholder interests.

To prepare, consider the following for all major projects on your resume:

Context:

What was the context of this project? What was the problem to be solved, and who was it affecting?
What were the business goals and overall project justification?
What were the different pressures constraining the project? Was it a steep technical challenge, or an urgent issue requiring quick action?

Technical Decisions:

What were the technical requirements? How were they decided?
What infrastructure were you working with?
What resource constraints existed?
What component / technology choices did you make and why?
What were the edge cases you considered?
What tradeoffs did you make, and what happened? Would you have done anything differently?

Team Leadership:

Who were the key stakeholders, and how would you summarize their respective roles and motivations?
What was prioritized, and how?
Who did you collaborate with, in what way, and what information did you gather?
If you were a people manager, how did you divide work among your team?
Did you need to protect your team’s time in the face of urgent stakeholder requests? How did you handle it?
How did you keep stakeholders informed of progress?
Were there any issues, miscommunications, or unforeseen risks? How did you manage these?
What did you learn?

Then, practice telling your story in a concise, impact-oriented way. We recommend using the STAR framework for both behavioral interviews and for the technical retrospective.

Looking for more practice?

Exponent has an interview prep course dedicated to technical retrospectives. It’s a good idea to practice live with a partner, as you’ll surely get several follow-ups. Exponent’s behavioral peer mocks run twice daily—check them out here.

Tips and Strategies

Read the job description carefully. Make sure you understand the scope of responsibilities and what Uber is looking for for each open role. Remember, each team hires independently.
Communication is key. Asking for clarification is always better than proceeding with incorrect assumptions. Interviewers are there to help; don’t be shy about asking to repeat or reframe the question.
Solve out loud. Create visuals—it’ll help you clarify your thoughts, and it’ll help your interviewer keep track of your process. Remember to answer all questions (both technical and behavioral) with the role in mind. Consider how your ideas and experience relate to what Uber does.

What does an Uber SWE do?

What are the typical job requirements for an Uber SWE?

Recommendations before you apply for Uber SWE roles

Interview Process

Recruiter Phone Screen

(Optional) Online Technical Assessment

Technical Phone Screen

Onsite Interview

General Coding: Data Structures and Algorithms

Specialized Coding: Domain-specific Questions

System Design and Architecture

Behavioral: Collaboration and Leadership

Technical Retrospective (for Senior Candidates)

Top Uber SWE Interview Questions

Data Structures and Algorithms

System Design and Architecture

Collaboration and Behavioral

Technical (Retrospective) Questions

Sample Interview Questions

Data Structures and Algorithms

System Design

Behavioral

Technical Retro

Tips and Strategies

Additional Resources

Learn everything you need to ace your Software Engineer interviews.

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