Staff Software Engineer, Backend

About the Role

Uber’s Customer Obsession (CO) org is hiring Staff Software Engineers to help define and scale one of the world’s largest AI-powered customer engagement platforms. Our systems power millions of real-time interactions across web, mobile, chat, voice, and video for riders, eaters, merchants, couriers, and support agents worldwide.

As a Staff Engineer, you’ll operate at the intersection of state-of-the-art AI and Uber’s production-grade engineering infrastructure—shaping the technical strategy for conversational experiences that are personalized, empathetic, and human-like, while remaining aligned with Uber’s business policies, compliance requirements, and reliability standards. This is a high-impact role with broad scope: you’ll influence platform direction, accelerate multiple teams, and deliver durable systems that improve customer experiences at global scale.

What You'll Do

We’re looking for a seasoned technical leader who combines deep engineering expertise with strong product intuition. You’ll set direction and drive execution for platform-level capabilities that power customer-facing assistants—bringing together LLM prompting/agent design, Uber’s assistant-building platforms, and highly reliable distributed systems.

In this role, you will:

• Set the technical vision and architecture for next-generation conversational assistants, influencing roadmaps across multiple teams and partner orgs

• Lead and de-risk large, multi-quarter initiatives, including migrations from legacy NLP systems to GenAI assistants and continued evolution of GenAI capabilities (quality, safety, latency, cost, evaluation)

• Own critical platform components (not just individual bots): frameworks, tooling, orchestration, observability, guardrails, and scalable backend services that enable consistent experiences across channels

• Drive cross-org alignment and execution, identifying ecosystem gaps, defining interfaces/standards, and building consensus to deliver production-ready implementations at scale

• Solve complex distributed systems and operational challenges under heavy traffic, raising the bar on reliability, performance, and operational excellence

• Establish mechanisms to measurably improve outcomes—reducing time-to-resolution, improving containment/CSAT, and scaling automation responsibly

If you enjoy high autonomy and technical depth—and want to multiply impact by enabling many engineers and teams—this role offers meaningful, visible work at global scale.

Basic Qualifications

• BS degree or higher in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)

• 8+ years of industry experience as a Software Engineer building scalable, highly available platforms

• Expertise with large-scale distributed systems (e.g., Kafka) and cloud platforms ( AWS, GCP, Azure) and proven track record leading the delivery of production-grade systems (deployment, monitoring, reliability, on-call readiness, incident learning)

• Proficiency in at least one: Golang, Scala, or Java and comfortable with scripting in JavaScript and/or Python

• Strong experience with microservices and gRPC/REST API design, including defining durable interfaces and platform standards

• Excellent cross-functional communication skills: crisp design docs, architecture reviews, stakeholder alignment, and technical decision-making

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing and operating GenAI/LLM-based systems in production, including evaluation, prompt/agent iteration loops, and safety/quality guardrails

• Prior experience building conversational platforms (assistant frameworks, orchestration, dialog/state management, tooling) rather than only individual chatbot implementations

• Familiarity with dialog management ecosystems (e.g., Google Dialogflow, Amazon Alexa) and patterns for multi-turn conversation handling

• Familiarity with multi-channel customer communication surfaces (e.g., WhatsApp, SMS, Slack) and building consistent experiences across channels

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$232,000 per year - USD$258,000 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. More details can be found at the following link https://jobs.uber.com/en/benefits.

Uber's mission is to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. Here, bold ideas create real-world impact, challenges drive growth, and speed fuels progress. What moves us, moves the world - let's move it forward, together.

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.

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.