Uber Senior+ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Matrix Swaps and Infrastructure Design

The author describes an Uber infrastructure-backend interview process with a phone screen and three virtual-onsite rounds. The screen asked for a valid sequence of adjacent swaps that arranges a matrix into alternating-direction sorted rows, followed by discussion of reducing the number of operations. The applicant had to create tests and found the time limit demanding.

Onsite coding involved repeated shortest-path queries constrained to increasing values in a grid. The design round examined storage for large structured datasets, with detailed discussion of caching, queues, failures, and load balancing. In the behavioral session, the hiring manager reportedly praised earlier feedback while emphasizing workload and staffing needs. The author interpreted the shortened process as hiring for a replacement role. No offer or rejection is stated, despite the manager’s positive comments.