For Janki Mehta, Engineering Manager, “true happiness lies in solving problems that truly matter to you.” For her, that means solving technical issues on a global product with the chance to bring magical experiences to millions around the world. As a manager for Uber Eats’ Shopping Order Platform, Consumer Fulfillment, and Consumer Engagement teams, Janki gets the chance to bring that passion to life every day.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
“Before joining Uber, I spent a decade in the financial domain at PayPal democratizing financial services leveraged by the underserved while leading platform and application development teams. Today, I lead the Uber Eats Shopping Order Platform, Consumer Fulfillment, and Consumer Engagement teams. We take care of the fulfillment platform and experiences to streamline delivery orders. The common intersection between all my roles has been to be customer-centric and indulge in solving their problems to evolve a great product.”
What excites you about working at Uber Eats?
“I get to work on new challenges every day. We are at the center of restaurants (merchants), couriers (earners), and eaters (shoppers) with our three-sided marketplace, solving problems in real-time that change every minute. The key resides in figuring out how we can close gaps between complexity and capability.
Our platform supports millions of orders per day. As part of the Shopping Order Platform team, we help maintain the shopping cart and state dynamics of orders. As part of the Consumer Fulfillment team, we provide a streamlined fulfillment experience where users can track their food or any delivery order in real-time along with transactional push notifications. We ensure seamless communication between couriers (earners) and eaters (shoppers). We listen to users and incorporate their ratings and reviews to create a feedback loop that improves experiences and builds local connections between merchants and shoppers. There is a lot to learn every day.”
How would you describe the culture at Uber Eats?
“We have a clear mission and values. We have leaders who are visible and accessible. We foster collaboration, harness our team member’s strengths, and also lean into healthy, transparent communication. We cultivate a spirit of excitement and positive motivation where people feel emotionally committed to the team and mission, not just a task. Our engineers understand their immediate and long-term goals. We celebrate every small win. There are ample opportunities to grow personally and professionally.”
What are some of the interesting problems your team is working on?
“True happiness lies in solving problems that truly matter to you. At Uber Eats, we get to solve a lot of technical reliability issues in a fast-moving environment. Last year we geared ourselves up to quickly integrate Postmates into our Uber Eats codebase. We rewrote our core platform services to support not just food deliveries, but any delivery. We developed experiences to give real-time promos to our targeted customers when issues happen with fulfillment. We integrated partner reviews into the Uber Eats app to quickly experiment with how it could benefit our gross bookings. This year we are all geared up to put our mark on grocery deliveries globally.”
What are some of the key lessons you’ve learned at Uber?
“We quickly adapt to market needs and changing business priorities. When the pandemic started, we rolled up our sleeves to push our delivery business further. We are customer-centric and take all feedback seriously. We talk daily about experiences that can be elevated and come together to solve them quickly. We strive to improve our quality bar daily through workstreams to track incident reviews, SLA agreement breaches, bug counts and trends, production support quality, and more. Accountability and ownership are two important qualities that can make you successful at Uber.”
Why should someone join Uber to build their technical career?
“Being an engineer at Uber Eats means shipping at an immensely large scale, solving complex real-time problems, pushing yourself every day to learn more, and having a huge impact around the world. We engage and energize our teams by communicating ideas clearly to compel action and results. You will see outcome-driven engineering with the propensity to operate with speed. Together we will determine strategic trade-offs to ensure personal growth and development.”
How would you sum up your experience at Uber Eats?
“You will grow and find yourself among smart people who solve challenges daily to make delivering anything anywhere smooth and frictionless.”
What advice would you give to someone starting their career journey?
“Being part of the fascinating tech ecosystem over the last decade, I believe that the key to success is how you differentiate yourself from the many smart people around you. So here are some words of wisdom that I have learned:
Be positive
Start everyday with positive energy and cheerSet your priorities
Clearly define your priorities for the dayBias for action
Respond promptly and deliver on your promisesCommunication is key
Tailor your messaging and strategize contentBe a good listener
Keep your listening ears on and be ready for honest feedbackCitizenship matters
Support initiatives outside your daily workBe persistent and consistent
Build your brandPeople first
Relationships matter and never burn bridges with your peers
Interested in joining us? Explore our open roles across Engineering ->
Posted by Philip Graumann
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