Went through the full UPS software engineer interview process earlier this year for a senior backend role on their logistics platform team, based out of Atlanta. Here's what actually happened.
Recruiter screen (week 1). Standard intro call, 30 minutes. Recruiter asked about years of experience, current comp expectations, and whether I'd need relocation. They were pretty upfront that they're hiring for an in-person/hybrid team in Atlanta or Louisville. Worth knowing before you waste time if remote is a dealbreaker.
Technical phone screen (week 2). One engineer, 45 minutes. Shared a CoderPad link. Two problems: a medium-difficulty array manipulation question and a basic SQL query against a schema they described verbally. Both felt like warm-up territory, not trying to trick you. They asked one system design softball at the end: 'how would you design a package tracking notification system?' I talked for about 10 minutes, they didn't dig in much.
Onsite / virtual onsite (week 4). Four rounds, each 45-50 minutes. Two coding rounds. Both LeetCode medium range. Graph traversal question came up in one. Dynamic programming in the other, but not the gnarly kind. One system design round. More on this in the separate thread I posted. One behavioral round. More on that one too.
Timeline overall: applied online, heard back in 9 days, screened in week 2, onsite week 4, offer week 6. Faster than I expected for a non-FAANG company. Total: about 6 weeks from first contact to offer.
A few things that surprised me. UPS actually runs a real technical loop. I came in expecting a perfunctory process for a logistics company and got something more structured than some Series B startups I've done. The engineers were sharp, asked real questions, and actually pushed back on my system design choices.
Comp was lower than FAANG, no shock there. The role itself is genuinely interesting if you care about scale problems. The engineering org has some tech debt (they acknowledged it) but the problems are real.