What topics are tested in Uber SDE-1 interviews?

Uber SDE-1 interviews test: Arrays, Strings, Hash Maps, Sliding Window, Intervals, Heaps, Union-Find, BFS/DFS.

Does Uber SDE-1 have a system design round?

No, Uber SDE-1 does not include a system design round. The focus is on DSA and coding.

Uber

Q: How many rounds are there in Uber SDE-1 interviews?

Uber SDE-1 typically has 4 rounds. Uber SDE-1 (L3) skips the online assessment for experienced hires — you go straight to a live coding phone screen. The bar is Medium-Hard and code must be clean, correct, and compilable; pseudo-code is not accepted. The onsite loop has two rounds: an Algorithms & Data Structures round and a Depth in Specialization round where interviewers expect production-quality, OOP-structured code — not just a working solution. A Director screen closes the loop. Uber's questions frequently use ride-hailing domain framing: trips, drivers, zones, and city-scale data.

Mobility / Tech · San Francisco, CA

Uber's real-time dispatch platform connects riders, drivers, and couriers across 70+ countries at massive scale.

Related Companies

Rounds: 4 rounds
Focus: DSA + Coding
System Design: No
Timeline: 2–3 weeks to offer

Role:

Rounds 1–2 are fully visible · Round 3+ unlocked with a free account

Technical Phone Screen

Round 1 of 4DSA / Coding

60 min

ArraysStringsHash MapsSliding Window

Live coding starts within the first 3 minutes — no warm-up, no pleasantries. One medium problem. The interviewer is collecting signal from minute one, so do not wait to be asked for complexity analysis; state it as you go. Problems are often framed with Uber context: trip logs, city zones, or driver-passenger assignments.

Medium

What to expect

e.g., 'Find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters' framed as finding the longest stretch of a route without repeated checkpoints
e.g., 'Given trip log entries (city, timestamp), return the top K most-frequent origin→destination city pairs' (HashMap frequency + heap)
e.g., 'Build a QuadTree for spatial partitioning' — new grad screens have included raw data structure implementation from scratch
Interviewer will push for space complexity reduction: 'Can you do this without storing the full history?'
Jumping straight to code before clarifying the input format is the most common early exit — Uber interviewers will not stop you, they just note it

Practice on KnowEase.AI

DSA Practice — Arrays →

On-site: Algorithms & Data Structures

Round 2 of 4DSA / Coding

60 min

IntervalsHeapsUnion-FindBFS/DFS

Two problems, one medium and one medium-hard, back to back. Both must be solved — Uber does not give partial credit for an explained approach without working code. The second problem often involves intervals, scheduling, or graph traversal framed around Uber operations: driver shift scheduling, delivery zone coverage, or meeting room allocation as a proxy for dispatch slots.

Medium–Hard

What to expect

Problem 1 (Medium): e.g., 'Given N driver shift intervals, return the minimum number of dispatchers needed so no dispatcher handles two overlapping shifts simultaneously' (interval scheduling / heap)
Problem 2 (Medium-Hard): e.g., 'Given a grid where each cell represents whether a restaurant is open, implement countDeliveryZones() where a zone is a connected cluster of open restaurants' — interviewers here prefer Union-Find over plain BFS; defaulting to BFS without knowing Union-Find is a known failure mode
Code must compile and pass test cases the interviewer runs in their head or on a shared editor
Edge cases tested explicitly at the end: empty input, single-element, overlapping at boundary

Practice on KnowEase.AI

DSA Practice — Trees BFS →DSA Practice — Heaps →

On-site: Depth in Specialization

Round 3 of 4LLD / OOD

60 min

GraphsOOPConcurrencySpatial Algorithms

This is not a standard LeetCode round. The problem is harder and the interviewer evaluates production-code quality: class decomposition, single responsibility, naming conventions, and modular structure. Think of it as a live code review. One hard problem, often involving graphs with a routing or proximity flavor.

What to expect

e.g., 'Implement a Meeting Room Scheduler with scheduleMeeting(startTime, endTime) returning the available room ID' — follow-ups push from O(M×N) brute force to O(N log N) via sorting + O(log N) binary search per query, then ask how it handles 10,000 concurrent requests
e.g., 'Design and implement a rate limiter for Uber's API gateway' — expects a thread-safe token-bucket or sliding-window implementation, not just the algorithm
Interviewer will ask you to walk through the code as if you're presenting it in a code review — silent coding with no narration signals poor collaboration
Not using OOP when a class boundary is obvious (e.g., putting everything in a single function) is a known rejection reason at this round

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Director Screen

Round 4 of 4Behavioral / HM

45 min

BehavioralOwnershipDirectness

Behavioral and fit round run by a Director or senior Engineering Manager. Uber's current culture values ownership, directness, and speed — the old 'hustle' framing is gone but the expectation of taking clear accountability for outcomes remains. This round carries more weight than candidates typically assume; people who sailed through coding have been rejected here.

What to expect

Walk me through a project you owned end-to-end — they will probe for your specific decisions, not team decisions
Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager and what happened — Uber values directness; a non-answer here is a red flag
How do you make a technical call when data is incomplete or conflicting?
Why Uber specifically — and they mean it; generic 'scale and impact' answers land flat; the stronger answer connects to rides, Eats, Freight, or Uber's specific marketplace challenges

Full details unlocked with a free account

Questions — coming soon.

Company Guide — coming soon.

About Uber SDE-1 Interviews

Uber SDE-1 (L3) skips the online assessment for experienced hires — you go straight to a live coding phone screen. The bar is Medium-Hard and code must be clean, correct, and compilable; pseudo-code is not accepted. The onsite loop has two rounds: an Algorithms & Data Structures round and a Depth in Specialization round where interviewers expect production-quality, OOP-structured code — not just a working solution. A Director screen closes the loop. Uber's questions frequently use ride-hailing domain framing: trips, drivers, zones, and city-scale data.

See interview loops for other companies:

Microsoft Amazon Flipkart Razorpay Walmart Coupang Rippling Rubrik Target

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