Staff Software Engineer - Configuration Platform

About the role and team

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be a technical anchor for the foundational systems that move the world - from building the next generation of orchestration platforms to architecting the stacks that power our global applications. We are the Configuration Platform team and our mission is to make Configuration as reliable as running water, and we need technical powerhouses to build the dependable, high-performance foundation that supports that vision.

Configuration moves Uber. It is the central nervous system of our platform, governing everything from real-time application experimentation to the dynamic infrastructure data that changes how Uber behaves globally by the second. Without a reliable configuration distribution system, our microservices cannot adapt to the real world.

This is a role for a proven, large-scale systems thinker who thrives in high-stakes environments. You will navigate the "messy" reality of complex infrastructures spanning global data centers and multiple cloud providers, supporting a diverse variety of workloads. You’ll need to make smart decisions with imperfect information and own the outcomes of global architectural choices. If you lead with clarity, build with heart, and are motivated by the challenge of peak efficiency at unparalleled scale - this is where you’ll make your mark.

What you’ll do

• Design systems that safely distribute, roll out, observe, and recover configuration changes with the reliability demanded by mission-critical massive global scale workloads. You ensure that even during infrastructure outages, Uber's dynamic behavior remains predictable and safe.
• Act as the foundational layer for hundreds of engineers. You will collaborate closely with the teams building the diverse configuration systems and products that sit directly on top of the Config Platform to ensure the pipeline meets their evolving scalability and feature requirements.
• Provide deep technical mentorship across the stack, ensuring architecture and implementations are robust, extensible, and secure.
• Lead and mentor engineers, reviewing code and designs while fostering a culture of continuous learning and humility. You will balance being AI-first while ensuring the quality of our code does not drop.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience building scalable, fault-tolerant products or platforms, with a track record of solving strategically important problems.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g., Go, C/C++, Java, Python, or JavaScript) and the ability to define organization-wide standards.
• Proven experience leading large-scale engineering projects through the entire lifecycle from inception to global productionization.
• Expertise in making complex engineering/business tradeoffs, managing the implications of "buy vs. build" or "incremental vs. rewrite" decisions.
• Experience identifying architectural gaps and acting as a multiplier to reduce technical debt across the organization.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) with a focus on distributed computing, system performance, or machine learning.
• Hands-on experience with Linux internals, container orchestration, or modern security architectural patterns.
• Experience contributing to open-source projects or leading industry-level technical discussions.
• Ability to anticipate future business needs and develop extensible, modular designs that meet long-term scalability targets.