Sr Staff Engineer

About the role:

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Staff Engineer to lead Uber’s core infrastructure modernization efforts, specifically focusing on core distributed systems and migration to cloud-based services. This is a hands-on role where you will be pivotal in developing, deploying, and scaling backend services and solutions that drive Uber’s user-facing products, downstream services, and internal infrastructure tools. You’ll work with cross-functional teams to ensure that Uber’s systems are not only highly reliable but also scalable to support our global customer base of over 100 million+ users..

About the Team:

Our team is responsible for developing and maintaining an industry-leading goal-seeking repair engine designed to ensure tenant health across instances and maintain optimal host utilization. This sophisticated system not only continuously monitors and heals infrastructure but also supports extensibility by enabling labor services to be pluggable, paving the way for the open sourcing of the Allocation Engine.

We play a critical role in defining the authoritative signal for workload tenant health and performance, ensuring workloads operate within their declared SLAs. This serves as the key contract between product and platform: while the platform has the freedom to implement infrastructural changes, it must always honor the SLA requirements. Our work results in a unified repair engine that spans all layers of the stack, including physical networking.

The repair engine is the cornerstone of maintaining steady-state health and serves as the gatekeeper for granting permissions to other systems making changes. At its core, our team is the guardian of tenant health, ensuring a reliable and resilient platform for all workloads.

What You’ll Do

• Lead and oversee complex modernization projects, migrating distributed systems to cloud services while aligning with Uber’s architectural and performance standards.
• Design, develop, and maintain robust backend services that power user-facing products and support downstream services, contributing to a seamless user experience.
• Drive the creation of infrastructure tools and platforms that improve reliability, scalability, and efficiency across Uber’s ecosystem.
• Provide expert technical guidance and mentorship to engineering teams, fostering best practices in distributed systems, cloud architecture, and backend development.
• Engage in hands-on coding, building highly interconnected distributed systems with a focus on resilience, scalability, and security.
• Ensure smooth, reliable deployment processes, optimizing for high performance and minimal downtime.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Infrastructure, and DevOps teams to deliver end-to-end, scalable solutions.
• Leverage Kubernetes for containerization and orchestration, enabling scalable deployment pipelines and efficient infrastructure management (Kubernetes experience is a plus).

Basic Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or related field
• Minimum of 10+ years of software engineering experience with a strong background in backend and/or infrastructure development.
• Minimum of 10+ years of experience in distributed systems and core system modernization, especially within hyper-scale cloud environments.
• Minimum of 10+ years experience building, deploying, and maintaining hyper-scale services supporting millions of users.
• Minimum of 10+ years in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Java, or C++).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in product engineering and scalability engineering.
• Expertise in cloud services and architecture, with experience in migration strategies and best practices.
• Knowledge of containerization, orchestration tools, and infrastructure management (Kubernetes experience is a plus).
• Proven ability to architect solutions that are scalable, reliable, and secure, with a focus on performance and high availability.
• Proficiency in working with microservices architecture and backend systems within high-growth, technology-driven organizations.
• Strong knowledge of cloud infrastructure providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and expertise in cloud-native tools.
• Familiarity with observability tools and techniques for monitoring and optimizing distributed systems.
• Proven ability to lead complex technical projects and effectively align multiple stakeholders toward common goals.

At Uber, we ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion. We take on big problems to help drivers, riders, delivery partners, and eaters get moving in more than 600 cities around the world!

We welcome people from all backgrounds who seek the opportunity to help build a future where everyone and everything can move independently. If you have a curiosity, passion and collaborative spirit, work with us, and let’s move the world forward, together!

For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$252,000 per year - USD$280,000 per year.

For Seattle, WA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$252,000 per year - USD$280,000 per year.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$252,000 per year - USD$280,000 per year.

For all US locations, you will be eligible to participate in Uber's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. You will also be eligible for various benefits. More details can be found at the following link https://www.uber.com/careers/benefits.

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing this form.

Offices continue to be central to collaboration and Uber’s cultural identity. Unless formally approved to work fully remotely, Uber expects employees to spend at least half of their work time in their assigned office. For certain roles, such as those based at green-light hubs, employees are expected to be in-office for 100% of their time. Please speak with your recruiter to better understand in-office expectations for this role.