Meet Uber Engineering Seattle

What’s it like to work at the Uber Engineering Seattle office? Our office has come a long way since its inception in March 2015. In February of 2016, after a year of substantial team growth, we opened a new engineering office to support future expansion.  Fast forward to today and our 10+ engineering and product teams are filling up two floors of a downtown Seattle office overlooking Elliott Bay. As our office has grown and developed, we’ve focused on several major engineering and product areas:

Here we introduce two key members of those teams: Tim Prouty, Head of Engineering, Seattle and manager of the BOSS teams, and Russell Dicker, Head of Product, Seattle, on the Rider Experience teams.

What do you do at Uber?

The first part of my job is to build a world class engineering organization in Seattle. My teams are focused on the mission of creating technology platforms that increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Uber’s products and operations. We call this organization Business Platforms, and it is one of Uber’s key leverage points to create an enduring and sustainable business.

The other major component of my job is to build Uber Engineering Seattle, the site location. This includes ensuring we take a principled approach to building teams and organizations here, establishing and cultivating our culture, and ultimately creating an environment for all Seattle teams to maximize their impact at Uber.

At Uber we talk a lot about hustle. When you’re building a site from scratch there are no shortage of opportunities to be scrappy and hustle to make sure the right things happen at the right time.

Over the first year, we moved offices 4 times while adding adding over one hundred people people. I’ve worked extensively with architects, hung out with commercial real estate agents to find office space, and even spent time debugging our video conferencing systems.

As the first engineer in Seattle, recruiting has been a huge part of my role. As you might expect I have interviewed hundreds of engineers and product managers, but I have also gotten to interview and hire everyone from recruiters and program managers to office managers and regional facilities managers.

These days the office is running like a well-oiled machine and I get to apply most of my hustle to building teams, products, and our unique culture here at Uber Seattle.

My day starts with a beautiful bike ride along the waterfront to our office in the heart of downtown Seattle. After pulling a shot on our pro-grade espresso machine, I typically spend a good portion of my day doing the following:

I believe Seattle is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. My wife and I have been in Seattle for 15 years, and with our three kids we plan to stay in Seattle for the long term. Uber Seattle is here for all of the like-minded people that want to work at Uber, but have absolutely fallen in love with this city.

Working for Uber in Seattle is unique, because we have all of the upside of Uber’s unprecedented growth while at the same time we are creating something truly special on a smaller scale. Each person who joins the team here gets to be a part of Uber and a part of creating an enduring culture that will be here for many years to come.

As the Head of Product for the Seattle office, I have two jobs.

As a Site Lead, I work with Tim to ensure that all the teams in Seattle are running well, have autonomy, and are set up to be successful. We think about all aspects of the office from environment to culture. There is a lot that happens behind the scenes to make an office successful. Since we’re relatively new, many of the things more established offices might take for granted, we get to build ourselves.

Second, I run the Rider Experiences team in Seattle. Our job is to build new experiences that expand the scenarios where Uber works well. This includes Uber at airports and venues, bringing the magic of Uber to all members of the family, scheduling rides on Uber, and a few experiences we’re still getting ready to show the world.

When people think about the Uber customer and the product, most of them think about riders and our app, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

We have two sets of customers: riders and driver partners, and they’re intertwined when thinking about what to build or how a change would have an impact. If you press a button in the app and a car doesn’t show up to take you somewhere, the product has failed. If a driver signs on to the platform but isn’t earning money, the product has failed.

Typical day; ha! No day is ever typical; a new challenge is always popping up, but some common ways to spend my day are:

I love Seattle; I’ve lived here for more than a decade. Even though I actually grew up in the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest is my home now. When I had the opportunity to build a product team for a company like Uber in Seattle I couldn’t say no.

Beyond the fundamentals, the specific program teams that I work with in the Seattle office represent the most fascinating and challenging problems of my career. We’re working on core problems that have a massive business impact, magical customer experiences, and the opportunity to take things from zero to a billion and beyond in shorter time scales than ever before. Yet we’re still a small team that knows how to hustle, grow and learn as a unit, and eats lunch together every day in one communal area.

We’re continuing to hire and grow our teams. For more information on what we are up to, check out our Uber Engineering Seattle microsite and the variety of teams hiring in the Uber Engineering Seattle office.

Leslie Kincaid is the Site Program Manager for Seattle’s Engineering Office.