Uber SDE hiring runs on an interview process, not a single written exam — an online assessment or phone screen, then a loop of onsite (or virtual onsite) rounds mixing coding, machine coding / LLD, system design, and a managerial or behavioral round. The exact rounds vary by role level (SDE-1 vs SDE-2/3) and by team, but the outline below is the pattern that shows up most consistently across recent (2025) candidate reports.
Typical Uber SDE interview process
| Stage | What it tests | Typical length |
|---|---|---|
| Online Assessment / Phone Screen | 1–3 DSA questions, sometimes with a light system-design or background discussion folded in | 45–90 min |
| DSA round(s) | Graphs, dynamic programming and shortest-path patterns, often with a live follow-up that changes the constraints | 45–60 min each |
| Machine coding / LLD round | A fully working implementation (not pseudocode) of a real system — file systems, schedulers, spreadsheets, caches | 60–90 min |
| System design (HLD) round | A large-scale design — expense splitting, location-based recommendations, real-time geospatial pipelines — often with a Staff Engineer | 45–60 min |
| Managerial / behavioral round(s) | Ownership, conflict resolution, collaboration, and motivation — sometimes split across two separate rounds | 30–45 min each |
Machine-coding and LLD rounds at Uber consistently expect fully runnable code, not a whiteboard sketch — get to an end-to-end working state first, then spend remaining time on edge cases. See the LLD Interview Questions section to prepare for this directly.
Process varies by team, level and loop. SDE-1 loops lean more heavily on DSA and a single LLD round; SDE-2 and above loops regularly add a dedicated HLD round with a Staff Engineer, and may split the behavioral portion into two separate hiring-manager conversations. Treat this table as the common pattern, not a guarantee of your exact loop.
Prepare each track on its own terms: DSA, LLD, System Design (HLD), and Behavioral & Culture-Fit.