Sr Staff Engineer - Core Infrastructure

About the role

We are seeking a Senior Staff Engineer (L6) to lead the technical strategy and evolution of Uber's Core Infrastructure Platform. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you are the principal architect of an ecosystem that handles 1M+ concurrent trips and massive-scale ML workloads. You will own the technical roadmap for our Compute, Foundations, and Software Networking stack, driving the shift from "Service Provider" to "Strategic Partner." We're looking for a visionary who can drive Platform Engineering 2.0, solving the "hard problems" of extreme scale—driving fleet utilization from 26% to 40%+, scaling GPU pools for Generative AI, and ensuring "Security by Design" across a global multi-cloud footprint.

Responsibilities

• Architect Strategic Efficiency: Own the technical vision to drive fleet-wide CPU utilization and unit-cost optimization through ARM adoption (targeting XM+ cores) and silicon diversity.
• Scale AI & ML Infrastructure: Define the architecture for shared GPU pools and high-performance clusters to support 300x larger ranking models and Autonomous Vehicle data ingestion.
• Modernize the Data Plane: Drive the convergence of Uber's networking stack toward industry standards (Kubernetes, Envoy, CNI) while enhancing "SkyEdge" for active-active multi-cloud resilience.
• Enforce Foundations & Reliability: Lead the "100% Done-Done" initiative, ensuring every service follows standardized safe-deployment (Starship) and reaches 100% zero-trust authorization.
• Agentic Augmentation: Integrate AI-driven "Minions" and AIOps into the infrastructure to automate 80% of alerts and unlock thousands of years of developer productivity.
• Cross-Org Influence: Partner with Delivery, Rides, and AV teams to ensure the infrastructure isn't just a container, but a competitive advantage that accelerates their time-to-market.
• Mentor Staff+ Engineers: Act as a force multiplier by coaching the next generation of technical leaders and influencing company-wide engineering standards.

Requirements

• Basic Qualifications:
  • 12+ years of software engineering experience, with a focus on massive-scale distributed systems or infrastructure.
  • Proven track record at scale: Experience managing infrastructure that supports millions of concurrent users or petabyte-scale data processing.
  • Deep systems expertise: Mastery of Kubernetes internals, container runtimes, and the Linux kernel, with the ability to debug "impossible" performance bottlenecks.
  • Cloud-native fluency: Deep experience with cloud-native networking (Envoy, CNI, Service Mesh) and multi-cloud (AWS/GCP) architecture.
  • Coding proficiency: Expert-level proficiency in Go, Java, or C++.
  • Leadership: Demonstrated ability to lead 40+ person technical initiatives and influence VPs and GMs on infrastructure investment.
• Preferred Qualifications:
  • Hardware/Silicon Strategy: Experience optimizing software for ARM architecture or specialized AI hardware (GPUs/TPUs).
  • Open Source Leadership: Significant contributions to Kubernetes, CNCF projects, or other major infrastructure open-source communities.
  • AIOps & Automation: Experience building self-healing infrastructure or using LLMs/ML to automate infrastructure operations and incident response.
  • Zero-Trust Security: Hands-on experience implementing S2S/P2S security models and ransomware-resilient infrastructure.
  • Cost-Aware Engineering: A proven history of driving XXM+ in annual P&L savings through architectural efficiency and resource scheduling.
  • Linux & Kernel Knowledge: Understanding of operating systems, Linux kernel performance tuning, or eBPF.

Pay

For New York City, NY-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $267,000 per year - USD $297,000 per year.

For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $267,000 per year - USD $297,000 per year.

For Seattle, WA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $267,000 per year - USD $297,000 per year.

For Sunnyvale, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD $267,000 per year - USD $297,000 per year.

Benefits

• Eligibility to participate in Uber's bonus program and receive equity awards and other types of compensation.
• 401(k) plan participation for all full-time employees.
• A range of benefits, including health, wellness, and other perks.

Schedule

Unless approved for full remote work, employees must spend at least 50% of their time in-office. Some roles, like those at greenlight hubs, require full-time in-office presence. Ask your Recruiter for details about this role's requirements.