Senior Software Engineer (Backend) at Uber Freight (Chicago IL 60607, United States)

Uber Freight· Chicago IL 60607, United States·59m ago

Role details

Level

Senior

Job description

Schedule: Full Time

Job Type: Hybrid

Salary Type: Salary

Req #: 3593

About the Team

The Uber Freight team is building a better future for shipping. We believe that when shippers and carriers have the freedom to move together, the entire industry moves ahead. Our teams design and build innovative applications, distributed systems, and real-time models to power our global logistics marketplace, spanning the Carrier experience, high-throughput Shipper enterprise portals, internal operations tooling, and core pricing, matching, and forecasting engines.

About the Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer at Uber Freight, you will be instrumental in designing and building the highly scalable systems that power our logistics platform, focusing on robust backend services, microservices, and APIs. You will work at the intersection of system reliability and complex business logic, partnering across product, operations, and fellow engineering teams to deliver seamless, high-performance solutions. Your technical depth and leadership will help define architecture and best practices for our backend infrastructure, while mentoring peers to raise the engineering bar across the organization.

What You Will Do

Build Scalable Backend Services: Design, develop, and maintain high-throughput, low-latency microservices and distributed systems using languages like Go, Java, Python, or C++.
Lead System Architecture: Drive architectural decisions, data models, and API contracts for resilient, fault-tolerant backend infrastructure.
Champion Engineering Excellence: Advocate for best practices across automated backend testing, security, code maintainability, and deployment pipelines.
Drive Scoping & Product Delivery: Partner closely with Product, Operations, and fellow engineering teams to define technical scope, manage trade-offs, and ship complex logistics features.
Shape the Technical Roadmap: Proactively identify technical debt, bottlenecks, and architectural limits to guide the long-term scalability of the platform.
Mentor & Foster Culture: Guide and mentor engineers across levels, conduct rigorous code and system design reviews, and promote operational ownership.
Own Production Health & Reliability: Troubleshoot distributed system failures in production, monitor service health, and drive blameless post-mortems to improve availability.

Basic Qualifications

BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
Minimum 5 years of software engineering experience.
Strong coding skills in one or more backend languages (Go, Java, Python, or C++).
Experience building and scaling microservices and distributed systems integrated with APIs.
Deep understanding of system performance, API design, and data modeling.
Experience with backend testing practices (unit, integration, and end-to-end).

Preferred Qualifications

Knowledge of data structures and algorithms and the ability to use them practically when implementing solutions.
Experience with one of the following databases: MySQL, SQL Server, or Oracle.
Proven track record of leading technical projects and mentoring engineers.
Knowledge of the logistics and transportation industry.

Benefits & Compensation for U.S. Employees

Employees working more than 30 hours in the US at Uber Freight are eligible for benefits like a company sponsored health plan, dental and vision benefits, 401k match, financial and mental wellness benefits, parental leave, short- and long-term disability coverage, life insurance and more. US based employees may also be eligible for a performance or sales incentive bonus program, participation in Uber Freight equity awards, and other types of compensation depending upon the role.

About Uber Freight

Uber Freight helps companies move goods more reliably and efficiently. We bring together the technology, people, and transportation capacity they need, using real‑time data from millions of shipments to guide smarter decisions. That helps customers spot issues early, avoid costly surprises, and deliver on time. Uber Freight works with 1 in 3 Fortune 500 shippers across North America and manages over $17B in freight. Learn more at www.uberfreight.com.

Candidate Privacy Notice

Uber Freight is committed to protecting the privacy of our candidates. We collect and process personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws. For detailed information on how we handle candidate data, please review our Candidate Privacy Notice.

EEOC

Uber Freight is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards 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.

For Chicago-based roles: The salary range for this role is $152,000.00 - $186,000.00 per year

Why work at Uber Freight

Culture & Values: Values include "Innovate with Purpose," "Stronger Together" (emphasizing diversity, equity, and belonging), and "Do the Right Thing." The company fosters collaboration where employees feel empowered to be authentic.
Career Growth: "Accelerated growth" is a core pillar—employees have access to cross-functional project work, formal training, quarterly feedback, and development conversations. Teams include engineering, data science, operations, sales, and customer service.
Work Model: Hybrid– offices in Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Northwest Arkansas (including Frisco, TX; Rogers, AR), Monterrey (MX), Netherlands, and others. Many roles (e.g., Logistics Specialist, Account Manager) are listed as hybrid.
Total Rewards: Competitive compensation, health insurance, family planning, wellness, personal time off, mental health benefits.
People & Team: Described as "friendly, smart, passionate individuals from every walk of life." Many employees come from top tech and logistics companies (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, C.H. Robinson, Uber).
Impact: "The potential to change the industry is huge," and employees are motivated by the positive impact on communities and the challenge of moving the world’s goods.
Employer Rating: 3.0/5.0 on LinkedIn (155 reviews), with Work-Life Balance at 3.2, Compensation at 3.0, Culture at 3.0, and Career at 2.8. Recent departures include several senior directors (Feb–Mar 2026) but headcount is still growing.
Active Job Postings: 68 open positions as of mid-2026, with a +54.5% increase in postings year-over-year.

About Uber Freight

Company Overview

One-liner: Uber Freight is a premier logistics partner that unifies managed transportation and multi-modal capacity in a shared operating model, leveraging advanced technology and one of North America’s largest carrier networks.
Entity Type: Private (wholly owned subsidiary of Uber Technologies, Inc.)
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Founded: 2017
Founders: Spun out of Uber Technologies; key leadership includes Lior Ron (co-founder of Uber Freight, departed) and current CEO (not publicly listed).

Core Business

Primary industry: Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain, and Storage
Target customers: B2B – specifically enterprise shippers (1 in 3 Fortune 500 companies), mid-market companies, and carriers. Serves industries including automotive, chemical, construction, CPG, food & beverage, manufacturing, packaging, and retail.
Mission statement: To lead the pace of logistics to move the world’s goods, redefining logistics by combining one of the largest multimodal carrier networks with cutting-edge technology and managed transportation expertise.

Products & Services

Uber Freight TMS (Transportation Management System): A SaaS platform that draws on freight activity across thousands of shipper networks with decades of accumulated data. It provides predictive signals for routing, capacity, and risk management, allowing teams to act earlier rather than react.
Multi-modal Solutions: Turn capacity across modes (truckload, LTL, intermodal, etc.) into governed programs aligned with network priorities. Helps shippers protect cost and service targets as conditions change.
Managed Services: A single operating layer that aligns procurement decisions, daily execution, and freight settlement. Financial outcomes, service targets, and carrier accountability stay coordinated across the shipment lifecycle.
Network Intelligence & Carrier Network: Access to one of North America’s largest multimodal capacity networks, with 18 million total shipments annually and 1.8 billion transactions annually. Customers benefit from network-level patterns translated into market insights.

Market Standing

Valuation/Market Cap: Not publicly disclosed (subsidiary of Uber Technologies, Inc., which had a market cap of ~$170B as of mid-2026). Prior funding rounds: $500M Series A (Oct 2020, led by Greenbriar Equity Group) and $550M Private Equity Round (Nov 2021).
Key Metric: Annual Revenue of $925.5M (2026 estimate); total funding of $1.05B.
Notable Investors/Partners: Greenbriar Equity Group, Nvidia (backing), Zeev Ventures, and other institutional investors.
Growth Signals:
- Manages $17B+ in freight under management.
- Saves customers $1B annually; 98% customer retention; average customer tenure of 8.5 years.
- Headcount of 2,637 (+3.7% YoY growth).
- Active in 42 countries with offices across North America, Europe, and Mexico.
- Acquired Transplace in 2021 (a major logistics acquisition) and Leancor.

Competitive Advantages

Network scale: One of the largest multimodal carrier networks in North America, processing 18M shipments and 1.8B transactions annually.
Data moat: Decades of accumulated freight data from thousands of shipper networks, providing predictive intelligence and market insights that competitors cannot easily replicate.
Uber ecosystem: Backed by Uber’s technology, brand, and talent pool, with access to cross-functional expertise in mobility, data science, and platform engineering.
End-to-end solution: Unique combination of TMS, managed services, and multi-modal capacity under a single operating model—unlike fragmented competitors.
Customer stickiness: 8.5-year average tenure and 98% retention rate, indicating deep integration into customer supply chains.

Strategic Focus

Unified orchestration: Moving beyond siloed tools to a single system that governs planning, procurement, capacity, and execution in real time.
Volatility management: Building systems that see risk earlier, adapt in motion, and protect performance as conditions change (e.g., supply chain disruptions).
AI and automation: Leveraging data and AI (including partnership with Nvidia) to deliver predictive signals and autonomous decision-making for shippers and carriers.
Expansion: Continued geographic and service line expansion (e.g., intermodal, cross-border Mexico/Canada, managed services).
Sustainability: Optimizing routes and modes to reduce carbon footprint and improve efficiency (implied by network intelligence capabilities).

Sources

Job description

About the Team

About the Role

What You Will Do

Basic Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications

Benefits & Compensation for U.S. Employees

About Uber Freight

EEOC

Why work at Uber Freight

Application questions