ok so I got an Uber university recruiter reach-out on LinkedIn yesterday and the screen is in 3 weeks. I'm class of 2025, backend-leaning, mostly Java and Python in internships. haven't done a real FAANG-adjacent loop before. spent the last hour trying to figure out what to actually study and I'm sharing my findings because the existing posts are from 2022 and things have shifted.
from what I can tell the Uber new grad SWE loop in 2026 looks like: online assessment: leetcode-style. usually 2 problems in 90 minutes. medium difficulty with one that might stretch into hard territory. they use HackerRank. I've seen people mention dp and graph problems specifically. phone screen (45 min): one coding problem plus maybe 10 minutes of behavioral at the end. standard whiteboard-style in their online IDE. virtual onsite: 2-3 coding rounds + 1 behavioral round. the behavioral one is usually 30 min and they're explicitly looking for core values alignment (Uber has a posted set of cultural attributes, worth reading before you go in).
what I'm planning to study: blind 75 first, then neetcode 150 for the ones I'm weak on focus on trees, graphs, dp, sliding window because those seem to come up most one behavioral story per competency area: leadership, dealing with ambiguity, handling a disagreement, going above and beyond actually read the Uber culture/values page
a senior friend told me Uber is more focused on clean code and communication than pure speed. like if you write a brute force and explain why you'd refine it, that's better than producing a messy O(n log n) solution quietly. not sure if this is still true in 2026 but I'm planning for it.
does anyone have more recent data on the online assessment format or the virtual onsite structure? especially for new grads vs experienced hires, the prep focus seems different.