Sr Staff Engineer - Backend

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About the role and team

Engineering at Uber means building for real-world impact under real-world constraints. As a Senior Staff Backend Engineer, you will lead the architecture and implementation of next-generation distributed systems that power the bedrock of Uber. This is a high-stakes, high-impact role where you’ll tackle some of the most complex infrastructure challenges in the industry: building sub-50ms latency systems that handle 1M+ requests per second, and designing resilient platforms that power tens of billions of dollars in global marketplace transactions across 70+ countries.

This isn't just about writing code; it's about setting the technical direction for an entire organization in a fast-moving, high-ambiguity environment. You will need to move the needle for the business by building systems that are not only highly available and reliable but also developer-friendly, enabling rapid innovation across ML and Product teams. If you think in systems, stay calm under the pressure of global scale, and are motivated by the "messy" reality of solving hard problems—this is where you’ll grow.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and implementation of highly available, resilient, and cost-efficient distributed systems that serve millions of users with strict sub-50ms latency requirements.
• Architect systems capable of handling 1M+ requests per second while maintaining 99.99% availability and strong consistency guarantees for critical financial and pricing flows.
• Drive technical strategy for platform evolution, microservices architecture, and API design to simplify integration for new lines of business and third-party partners.
• Build platform abstractions and developer tools that hide massive underlying complexity, enabling ML and product teams to iterate rapidly on core algorithms.
• Spearhead architectural transitions toward "Dual-rail" resiliency, ensuring every mission-critical payment or pricing flow has redundant processing options to maximize reliability.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, and Ops at the Director and VP levels to translate commercial requirements into scalable, hardened platform solutions.
• Own technical excellence by driving architecture reviews, identifying and reducing systemic technical debt, and raising the bar for observability and incident response across the organization.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience in backend development and building world-class distributed systems in large-scale production environments.
• Proven ability to solve strategically important problems by leading organization-wide development and adoption of key frameworks and coding best practices.
• Experience foreseeing architectural problems or opportunities a year in advance and working with leadership to address them before they impact the business.
• Demonstrated track record of leading large-scale engineering projects through all lifecycle stages, from inception and requirement gathering to global productionization.
• Expertise in defining standards for testing, monitoring, and alerting systems, while overseeing the execution of complex incident management at an organizational level.
• Proven experience in identifying architectural gaps and creating org-wide frameworks that improve developer velocity and reduce systemic technical debt.
• Demonstrated leadership in building strategic relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners to rally an organization around a technical vision.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expert-level proficiency in Go, Java, or Python with experience in real-time marketplace platforms requiring high consistency and global reliability.
• Experience building hardened developer tools, SDKs, and abstractions (e.g., streaming data with Flink/Kafka) used by hundreds of engineers.
• Proficiency in cloud-native infrastructure (GCP) and containerization (Kubernetes) at a massive global scale.
• Strategic architecture mindset: Ability to balance near-term execution with long-lasting engineering artifacts that improve reliability within an organization.
• Experience as a technical brand ambassador, serving as a representative for the organization to the broader internal and external technical community.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $267,000 per year - USD $297,000 per year.

You will be eligible to participate in Uber's bonus program, and may be offered an equity award & other types of comp. All full-time employees are eligible to participate in a 401(k) plan. You will also be eligible for various benefits.

Ready to Ride?

This isn't the kind of place where you follow a playbook — it's where you help write one. If you're driven by impact, energized by challenge, and ready to shape how the world moves — we'd love to hear from you.

You may be eligible for bonuses, equity, and other compensation, as well as a range of benefits. Explore our benefits.

Offices remain key to collaboration and Uber's culture. Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements.

Uber is proud to be an Equal Opportunity 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.