Staff Engineer - Core Infrastructure

Job description

About the Role As a Staff Engineer (5B) in Core Infrastructure, you will be a key technical leader driving the architecture and evolution of the systems that power Uber’s global business. You will engage with stakeholders across the company to spearhead backend solutions supporting every trip, delivery, and infrastructure tool used at Uber. We are building a "cloud-native by default" ecosystem that is secure, reliable, and hyperscale-efficient.

In this role, you will own the technical roadmap for critical sub-systems, ensuring our infrastructure is prepared to handle 1M+ concurrent trips alongside the massive compute demands of Generative AI and Autonomous Vehicle data. About the Team The Core Infrastructure Platform team builds the next generation of Uber’s orchestration, foundation, and networking layers. We manage a highly complex fleet spanning on-prem data centers and multiple public clouds, supporting a diverse variety of workloads including stateless, batch, streaming, and ML.

Our ultimate goal is to create seamless abstractions so Uber developers can deploy anywhere in the world with the touch of a button—making infrastructure "just work." We are also highly active contributors to the open-source community (Kubernetes, CNCF) and regularly present our innovations at industry conferences like KubeCon.

What You Will Do

Lead Architectural Evolution: Identify architectural gaps in our compute and networking stacks. Lead projects from ideation to global execution to fill those gaps (e.g., migrating to standardized CNI/Envoy or implementing shared GPU pools).

Drive Efficiency at Scale

Design and implement solutions to increase fleet-wide CPU utilization (targeting 40%+) and accelerate ARM adoption to aggressively optimize Uber’s unit costs.

Modernize for Multi-Cloud

Direct the technical strategy for our "Thrive in Cloud" initiative, ensuring our foundations are resilient, active-active across providers, and capable of rapid regional failover.

Integrate AIOps & Automation

Drive the development of "Agentic" infrastructure tools (e.g., Project Eve for network quality) to automate 80% of alert triaging and incident response.

Champion "Security by Design"

Ensure 100% service-to-service authorization and zero-trust networking are baked into the core fabric of our container and networking platforms.

Drive Cross-Functional Impact

Collaborate heavily with Storage, Data, and Product teams to ensure the infrastructure can support 300x larger ranking models and L4 Autonomous Vehicle data ingestion.

Mentor & Scale Talent

Act as a force multiplier by mentoring 5A and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of "100% Done-Done" and operational excellence across the organization.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related technical field (or equivalent practical experience). 8+ years of full-time Software Engineering work experience (inclusive of PhD research or equivalent specialized education).

Systems Languages

Deep, hands-on proficiency in Go, Java, or C++.

Distributed Systems Mastery

Demonstrated experience designing, building, and productionizing large-scale, high-availability infrastructure services.

Execution Excellence

A proven track record of leading complex, multi-quarter technical initiatives from initial design through fleet-wide rollout.

Preferred Qualifications

Cloud-Native Depth: Deep knowledge of Kubernetes internals, container runtimes (CRI), and modern networking (CNI/Envoy).

Infrastructure Strategy

Prior experience with hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud migrations and cost-optimization at a massive scale.

Linux & Kernel Knowledge

Strong understanding of operating systems, Linux kernel performance tuning, and/or eBPF.

AI/ML Infrastructure

Experience building or managing compute platforms specifically tailored for GPU scheduling and large-scale model training.

Community Influence

Active contributions to open-source infrastructure projects or a history of presenting at major technical conferences.

Responsibilities

For San Francisco, CA-based roles

The base salary range for this role is USD $232,000 per year - USD $258,000 per year.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles

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.