Principal Engineer

About the Role

Are you passionate about shaping business and product strategy through the power of data? Do you thrive on solving complex problems and uncovering actionable insights that drive innovation? If so, this role might be the perfect fit for you.

Principal engineers at Uber have a deep impact across a wide variety of business and technology decisions spanning multiple programs, projects and locations. They are passionate and pragmatic technologists who are able to design and architect highly-available, secure scalable and resilient systems while delivering efficient code. They are not only collaborative role models, but also approachable leaders with a point of view within a larger group.  They are humble teachers, technically mentoring a team of passionate engineers while also delivering uniquely challenging projects. A Principal-level Engineering role at Uber is special, representing  the top 2% of Engineers at Uber.

The Marketplace Engineering team is looking for an exceptional Principal Engineer to lead breakthrough ML innovation in Uber’s Driver Pricing organization. This is a high-impact role where you’ll architect and build next-generation ML systems that directly optimize marketplace efficiency and driver earnings for millions of drivers globally.

You’ll tackle some of the most complex problems in applied machine learning: real-time pricing optimization, supply-demand balancing, and driver behavior modeling at unprecedented scale. Your work will involve cutting-edge techniques including causal inference, reinforcement learning, algorithmic game theory, and multi-objective optimization to solve challenges that don’t exist anywhere else in the industry.

As a Principal Engineer reporting directly to the Engineering Director, you’ll drive technical strategy, mentor senior engineers, and establish ML engineering excellence across the Driver Pricing organization while solving problems that directly impact tens of billions of dollars in marketplace transactions.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership & Innovation

• Lead the design and implementation of advanced ML systems for dynamic pricing algorithms serving millions of drivers across 70+ countries around the world
• Architect real-time ML infrastructure handling 1M+ pricing decisions per second with sub-50ms latency requirements
• Drive breakthrough research in causal ML, reinforcement learning, algorithmic game theory, and multi-objective optimization for marketplace optimization with strategic agents
• Own end-to-end ML model lifecycle from research through production deployment and continuous optimization
• Develop and enforce best practices in system design, ensuring data integrity, security, and optimal performance
• Serve as a representative for the Marketplace organization to the broader internal and external technical community
• Contribute to the eng brand for Marketplace and serve as a talent magnet to help attract and retain talent for the team
• Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies in software engineering, focused particularly on ML/AI, to enhance our systems and processes continually

Platform & Architecture

• Build scalable ML architecture and feature management systems supporting Driver Pricing and broader Marketplace teams
• Design experimentation frameworks enabling rapid testing of pricing algorithms using A/B, Switchback, Synthetic Control, and other experimental methodologies
• Establish ML engineering best practices, monitoring, and operational excellence across the organization
• Create platform abstractions that enable other ML engineers to iterate faster on pricing algorithms

Cross-Functional Impact

• Partner with Product, Operations, and Earner Experience teams to translate complex business requirements into ML solutions
• Collaborate with Marketplace Engineering and Science teams to productionize cutting-edge ML research
• Work with Platform Engineering teams to ensure ML systems meet reliability and performance standards
• Influence technical roadmaps across multiple teams through technical leadership and strategic thinking
• Collaborate with internal ML/AI infra teams at Uber to build and deploy AI solutions that have a meaningful impact to the business

Team Development

• Mentor and grow senior ML engineers, establishing technical standards and engineering culture
• Lead technical discussions and architecture reviews for complex ML systems
• Drive knowledge sharing and technical excellence across the Driver Pricing engineering organization

What You’ll Need

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Operations Research, or related quantitative field OR Master’s degree with 12+ years of industry experience
• 10+ years of experience building and deploying ML models in large-scale production environments
• Expert-level proficiency in modern ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX) and distributed computing platforms (Spark, Ray)
• Deep expertise across multiple areas including: Deep Learning, Causal Inference, Reinforcement Learning, Multi-objective Optimization, Algorithmic Game Theory, and Large-scale Ads Ranking/Auction Systems
• Proven track record of leading complex ML projects from research through production with significant measurable business impact
• Strong programming skills in Python, Java, or Go with experience building production ML systems
• Experience with feature engineering, model serving, and ML infrastructure at scale (handling millions of predictions per second)
• Technical leadership experience including mentoring senior engineers and driving cross-team technical initiatives
• Advanced Deep Learning and Neural Network architectures
• Scalable ML architecture and distributed model training
• Feature engineering and real-time feature serving
• ML model deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management
• Statistical analysis and experimental design for ML systems
• Causal Machine Learning and causal inference methodologies
• Reinforcement Learning and Multi-Armed Bandits
• Multi-objective optimization and Pareto efficiency
• Algorithmic Game Theory for strategic agent modeling

Bonus Points If

• Marketplace or two-sided platform ML experience with understanding of supply-demand dynamics and pricing mechanisms
• Publications or patents in applied machine learning, particularly in areas relevant to optimization, pricing, or marketplace dynamics
• Experience with causal inference methodologies and their application to business problems with network effects
• Reinforcement learning experience in production environments with long-term optimization and strategic agent considerations
• Technical leadership experience including mentoring senior engineers and driving cross-team technical initiatives
• Experience with real-time ML systems requiring low-latency inference and high-throughput model serving
• Background in economics, operations research, or related quantitative disciplines with application to marketplace problems
• Experience with Ads ranking and auction systems with strategic bidding agents and real-time optimization
• Personalization and ranking systems at scale
• Time series forecasting and demand prediction
• Graph-based ML for network effects modeling
• Experience with Ads ranking and auction systems

Why This Role Matters

Your ML innovations will directly impact:

• Driver earnings optimization affecting millions of drivers’ livelihoods globally
• Marketplace efficiency balancing supply and demand across diverse global markets
• Business performance influencing tens of billions of dollars in gross bookings annually
• Technical excellence establishing ML engineering standards used across Uber

What We Value

• Exceptional technical depth combined with practical engineering skills to deliver production ML systems
• Strategic thinking about ML architecture and long-term technical roadmaps
• Collaborative leadership building consensus around technical decisions across multiple teams
• Results orientation with focus on measurable business impact and engineering excellence
• Intellectual curiosity driving innovation in applied ML research and productionization

Location

Preferred locations (in order of preference):

• San Francisco / Sunnyvale, CA
• Seattle, WA
• New York, NY
• Toronto, Canada

About the Team

The Uber Marketplace is designed to move riders & drivers efficiently from where they are to where they want to go. Every dollar that is transacted in the Uber Marketplace (driver forecasting, dynamic pricing fares, matching driver/rider pricing, and overall marketplace health) is informed and influenced by data – and our Data Science team understands, analyzes, and helps design the algorithms that enable millions of earners and consumers to ride, deliver, eat, and move daily.

Uber operates in a constantly-evolving and competitive environment, across a diverse set of markets and product categories. Assessing the success or failure of a product or investment strategy depends on deeply understanding this context and quantifying the impact with thoughtfully-defined success metrics. Doing this - and doing it well - at Uber’s global scale is an interesting and complex problem with meaningful impact on our P&L.

The Marketplace Science & Engineering team applies their expertise in statistical modeling, machine learning, economics, data analysis, and business strategy to build scalable data platforms, generate actionable insights, and drive our algorithm and product development decisions.

For Canada-based roles: The base salary range for this role is CAD$270,000 per year - CAD$300,000 per year.

For New York, NY-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$284,000 per year - USD$315,500 per year.

For San Francisco, CA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$284,000 per year - USD$315,500 per year.

For Seattle, WA-based roles: The base salary range for this role is USD$284,000 per year - USD$315,500 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. You will also be eligible for various benefits. More details can be found at the following link https://www.uber.com/careers/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.