Senior Software Engineer - Earner Incentive

About the Role

Uber’s Marketplace sits at the core of the business. The Earner Incentive team in Marketplace builds large-scale platforms and services that empower drivers through targeted incentives, creating a more balanced, efficient marketplace while improving driver earnings and experience.

The team owns the end-to-end incentive lifecycle, from incentive configuration and generation to high-throughput, low-latency online serving. We build reliable, scalable, and earner-centric platforms and systems that power personalized incentive offers aligned with each earner’s preferences and driving patterns. These systems enable proactive, targeted incentives that shape supply, optimize earnings, and support marketplace balance at global scale.

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and scale the core services and data pipelines behind Uber’s driver incentive platforms. In this role,you will focus on backend and platform system design, service reliability, data consistency, and operational excellence, supporting both scheduled and near real-time incentive workflows across Uber’s marketplace.

You will collaborate closely with machine learning engineers, product managers, scientists, and operations partners to set technical direction, reason through trade-offs, and translate complex marketplace requirements into robust, production-ready backend systems. Your work will directly influence how incentives are delivered at scale - improving marketplace efficiency and reliability while enabling earning opportunities for millions of drivers worldwide.

What you will do

1. Design, build, productionize, and operate high-performance, scalable, and reliable backend platforms and data pipelines that power driver incentive systems at large scale.
2. Develop robust marketplace systems and incentive solutions that improve marketplace efficiency, reliability, and enable earning opportunities for millions of drivers.
3. Build deep domain expertise in incentives, pricing, and marketplace dynamics, and understand how these systems interact withOperations. Translate business requirements into clear problem statements and actionable technical plans, reasoning through trade-offs to deliver practical, production-ready solutions.
4. Work with ML engineers and scientists to deliver incentive systems and platforms and continuously improve product performance.
5. Contribute to the team’s technical direction by partnering with leads, designing scalable architectures, reviewing designs and code, and driving improvements in system performance, scalability, maintainability, and maintainability.
6. Drive strong engineering best practices across development, testing, monitoring, and operational excellence to ensure long-term system health and reliability.
7. Collaborate closely with engineers, product managers, scientists, and Operations to drive clarity, alignment, and delivery of high-impact solutions to complex business problems.
8. Own projects end-to-end, from ideation and design through production rollout and iteration, delivering timely results and measurable business impact across teams.
9. Mentor and support the growth of junior engineers.

Basic Qualifications

1. Master’s or Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience with demonstrated long-term impact.
2. 5+ years of experience across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering, system design, implementation,testing, deployment, and operating large-scale production systems. Proven ability to deliver measurable business impact and a strong grasp of software engineering best practices.
3. Proficiency in at least one production language, such as Java, Scala, Go, Python, or C++.
4. Strong experience in backend development, including designing microservices, developing APIs, and building reliable, scalable services.
5. Proven track record of delivering impactful product features, balancing engineering quality, reliability, and execution speed.
6. Strong ownership and learning mindset, with excellent problem-solving, collaboration and communication skills; able to work effectively and independently in cross-functional environments.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience building and operating pricing, matching, or incentive platforms for two-sided marketplaces or consumer-facing products, with strong product intuition and system-level thinking.
2. Familiarity with large-scale data infrastructure and processing systems (e.g., Spark, Flink, Hive, Cassandra), including both batch and real-time pipelines.
3. Experience collaborating closely with Machine Learning Engineers and ML infrastructure teams, and integrating ML-driven solutions into backend systems to deliver measurable product and business impact.
4. Proven experience leading complex technical projects, influencing scope, technical direction, and execution across multiple engineers or teams, while delivering high-quality features with strong execution velocity.
5. Ability to translate business problems into scalable and robust software solutions, making sound trade-offs to drive meaningful business outcomes.
6. Experience working effectively across team and organizational boundaries, partnering with engineering, product, science, and operations stakeholders.
7. Strong communication and technical leadership skills, including driving alignment, leading initiatives from ideation through production,mentoring engineers, and influencing platform or system architecture.

For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$202,000 per year - USD$224,000 per year.

For Seattle, WA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$202,000 per year - USD$224,000 per year.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$202,000 per year - USD$224,000 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. 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.