Uber Interview Questions

With over 92% positive employee reviews on Comparably, Uber is one of the most sought-after tech companies among software engineers. In 2021, the company won the Best CEOs for Diversity award  – ranking based solely on anonymous sentiment ratings from non-Caucasian employees on Comparably. Uber was also rated the Best Global Structure 2021 and the Best Company Outlook 2021.

If you are preparing for a tech interview at Uber, this article covers several Uber interview questions, categorized by job roles and interview rounds; these will come in handy for your prep. We’ll also cover some key tips to help you land your dream job at Uber.

1. Uber Interview Process
2. Uber Interview Questions
3. Practice Questions to Ace Your Uber Tech Interview
4. Tips to Answer Uber Interview Questions
5. Tips for Uber Interview Prep
6. FAQs on Uber Tech Interviews

Uber Interview Process

The Uber interview process, like all interviews, starts with you applying for a job role. Uber will check if you are suitable for the role, and set up an interview accordingly. Recruiters at Uber also suggest positions that might suit your profile better than what you applied for.

Once you’re shortlisted, you’ll go through a technical phone screen and on-site interviews.

In most cases, the duration of each phone screen and on-site interview is 40 minutes.
‍

Phone Screen/Technical Screen

The phone screen includes a coding exercise. Your interviewer will read your codes with HackerRank as you keep working. You can use a programming language of your preference to solve the problem. If your interviewer is not familiar with the language you are using, you’d have to explain your code, in addition to explaining the logic.

Note: According to Uber recruiters, a common query they receive during this round is whether it is okay to use outside libraries in your solution. We recommend using a standard library. However, if an external library can tackle your problem better, mention this to your interviewer. This will help them understand your expertise in the chosen language.

Recommended Reading:
The Hardest and Easiest Programming Languages to Learn for FAANG Interviews

On-site Interviews

The Uber on-site will include 4-6 face-to-face interviews on the trot. Your interviewers will either ask you to use HackerRank or a whiteboard to solve the problems.

Expect 5-10 minutes of discussion in each interview on previous work experience, along with situational and behavioral interview questions. The final 5-10 minutes is for you! Ask the interviewer about the job role. Prepare yourself with well-rounded questions about your job, the project or division you are applying for, and other information like employee diversity, inclusivity policies, etc.

Check out Uber Tech Interview Process for more information.

Uber Interview Questions

In this section, we’ve covered some common interview questions asked at Uber tech interviews. Prepare answers for these questions to get a sense of what you can expect at Uber interviews.

Uber Behavioral Interview Questions

1. Tell us about yourself.

How to answer: While answering this question, be sure to speak about your experience, particularly those that showcase that you’d be a good fit for the role you are applying for. Always back your statements with examples.

Sample: I am a passionate engineer. I apply myself to a task wholeheartedly and efficiently work alone and as a part of a team. For instance, in my previous roles, I collaborated with <mention the team name> to <mention the goals you achieved as a team>. I like to learn and keep working on developing my expertise. Over the last year, I <talk about new things you learned or courses you completed>.

2. Why do you want to work for Uber?

How to answer: Talk about what you like about Uber and its product/service. Try to focus on a specific reason that is motivating you to work for Uber. You can also mention Uber’s work culture and excellent employee benefits and why they’re valuable to you. Ensure that they understand Uber is your first choice.

Other common Uber behavioral interview questions:

3. What skills do you think are most important to work at Uber?
4. Tell us about your strength and weaknesses.
5. How do you handle a project life cycle?
6. Why do you think you are a good fit for this position?
7. Tell us three things you did not like about your last job.
8. Walk us through a situation where you had to make a decision with limited information.
9. Tell me about a time when you felt overwhelmed with office work.
10. Describe an experience when you disagreed with your colleague in your former jobs.
11. Walk us through the most difficult decision you took at work.
12. How do you prioritize tasks while working on multiple projects?
13. What will you do if you do not agree with a company policy or procedure and need to comply with it anyway?
14. Tell us about a time when you faced deadline stress and how you coped with it.
15. Give us an example of when you used logic to come out of a certain fix at your previous jobs.
16. Tell me about a time when you had to motivate a coworker.
17. Describe your biggest achievement at work.
18. How do you cope with the increasing workload?
19. Walk us through a situation where you used your communication skills to overcome an issue.
20. Tell me about the most interesting project you are working on this year and what you are learning from it.
21. Describe a time when you took it upon yourself to improve in-house work procedures.

Uber Coding Interview Questions

Be prepared to face questions like the ones below during your coding interviews at Uber.

1. You are given a 9x9 2D matrix with some empty cells (denoted by 0) along with cells filled with digits (1-9) such that the final matrix is a valid Sudoku solution. (Solution)
2. Given a two-dimensional boolean matrix, find the number of islands. An island is a group of connected 1s or a standalone 1. A cell in the matrix can be connected to up to 8 neighbors: 2 vertical, 2 horizontal, and 4 diagonal. (Solution)
3. Implement a queue with two stacks. (Solution)
4. You are given an array/list of unsorted ARR of N integers. Return the length of the longest consecutive sequence. The consecutive sentence in the form ['NUM', 'NUM' + 1, 'NUM' + 2, ..., 'NUM' + L], where ‘NUM’ is the starting integer of the sequence while L + 1 is the length of that sequence. If we find duplicates in the array, we will consider only one of them in a consecutive sequence. Like, for the given ARR [9,5,4,9,10,10,6], output = 3. Here, the longest consecutive sequence is 4, 5, 6. Can you also solve this in 0(N) space complexity and 0(N) time?
5. You are given a binary tree of integers. Print the right view of this binary tree. The right view of a binary tree is a set of nodes when viewed from its right side, while the nodes are printed in the top to bottom order.
6. A group of friends went on a trip and lent each other money for various purposes. The tuple (X, Y, Z) represents each transaction, i.e., person X gave person y $Z. Given a list of 'N' number of transactions, return the minimum number of transactions required to settle the debt.
7. Delete Edge to minimize the difference in subtree sum.
8. Find the Max Rectangle in a Histogram.
9. How to determine the max product of three numbers?
10. What is Contiguous Subarray Sum?
11. Merge two binary trees.
12. Implement a hash map.
13. Write an efficient and effective function that can check whether a permutation of any input string is a palindrome.
14. Write a function to find an index of a rotation point in an array.
15. Write a function fib() that will take an integer n and return the respective nth Fibonacci number.
16. Check whether your single-linked list contains a cycle.

Check out the Problems page for more coding problems and solutions.

We’ll cover some interview questions specific to the front-end engineer and data engineer roles in the following sections.

Uber Front-end Interview Questions

Some of the most common front end interview questions at Uber are:

1. Do you have experience with micro-services?
2. Evaluate a given JavaScript and specify what it is doing.
3. If you face JavaScript performance issues, what is your course of action?
4. Implement a loading bar that animates 0-100% in 3 seconds.

Uber Data Engineer Interview Questions

Some common questions for data engineers and scientists applying for Uber are:

1. What are the assumptions of linear regression?
2. Give me an equation to optimize marketing spend between Twitter and Facebook.
3. Explain dynamic (surge) pricing and how you can measure supply and demand.
4. Print a function to calculate a given number’s square root up to two points’ precision.
5. Write a production code to reverse a given number.
6. What is a stationary signal?
7. Give the difference between MLE and MAP.
8. What do nested SELECT and WITH do in SQL?
9. Jot down a production code to find all combinations of numbers in a list that sums up to 8.

Looking for guidance on how to crack front-end engineering or data engineering interviews? Interview Kickstart offers Tech Interview Masterclasses specially tailored for the hottest engineering domains such as data engineering, ML, embedded systems engineering, and more.

Sign up for our FREE webinar to learn more!

4 Tips to Answer Uber Interview Questions

Here are some suggestions you want to keep in mind while preparing for your upcoming Uber software developer or tech lead interview:

• Be data-centric: Uber is a highly data-driven company. It is not only evident by its operations but is also an intricate part of its work culture. Therefore, they prefer to hire engineer managers and tech leads that use data to identify and solve problems. Hence, put active effort to tie your analyses and ideas with data.
• Provide solutions that work in multiple areas: Uber offers multifaceted services of a single market. For instance, its UberEats is serving customers, restaurants, along with courier partners. So, when you are answering Uber interview questions, analyze how potential solutions can affect multiple relevant market beneficiaries.
• Demonstrate adaptability: Uber prefers employees who can take accountability and do not run into crisis mode whenever there are not enough details available. Therefore, various questions will test your ability to improvise and plan the next step.
• Stick to your solutions if they are right: Stick up for an idea in an interview even if your interviewer disagrees with it. If you are sure about your idea, articulate the same clearly to the interviewers, maintaining professionalism.

Tips for Uber Interview Prep

The following tips will help you to prepare for your Uber interview in a more streamlined manner. Take a look.

1. Keep the elevator pitch ready: Construct an elevator speech to talk about your background, your interests, and why you think you are right for the job position you are applying for. It is better if you can talk specifically about your contribution when describing your past job experience.
2. Fundamentals: You should then work on remembering the basics of computer science. Brushing up on the fundamentals can be a key to acing all critical Uber interview questions.

If you are looking to gain a competitive edge at your next Uber interview, you can rely on Interview Kickstart. We offer unmatched tech interview prep for engineers aspiring to join FAANG and other tier-1 tech companies such as Uber.

Our technical prep course includes mock interviews and technical coaching with FAANG+ instructors coupled with a comprehensive curriculum – all streamlined to help you ace your Uber interview.

Register for our FREE webinar to learn how to nail your next tech interview.

FAQs on Uber Inteviews

1. What are some useful coding books to help me prepare Uber interview questions and answers?

Some popular books on coding are Cracking the Coding Interview, The Algorithm Design Manual, Elements of Programming Interviews, Programming Pearls, and Programming Interviews Exposed.

2. What is the average salary of software engineers at Uber?

Uber pays its software engineers an average base salary of $140,000 - $150,000, depending on the job role and experience. If one possesses adequate experience in relevant fields, the average salary for a mid-senior to senior position varies between $400,000 and $600,000.

3. What are the employee benefits at Uber?

‍Uber offers a flexible work schedule, hybrid work culture, insurance, paid time-offs, unlimited PTOs for eligible employees, stock options, and Roth 401K provisions, to name a few of its employee benefits.
‍
‍4. How hard is it to get an Uber interview?

The technical interview questions at Uber range from moderate to high difficulty. At the end of the interview, the candidate can ask the interviewer about the position.

5. How long is the interview process at Uber?

The length of each interview round varies depending on the stage but can last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. The total duration of the hiring process can range from a few weeks to several months, depending on the level of the position, from application submission to job offer.