Inside the Work

Building what’s next: inside Product & Product Design at Uber

2 minute read

Explore what it’s like to be work in Product & Product Design at Uber, building real-time systems that power millions of rides and deliveries.

What does it take to build products for a future that doesn’t have a playbook yet? Kevin Malta, Senior Product Manager for Autonomous Mobility & Delivery, shares how his team is turning real-time vehicle signals into seamless, human-centered experiences—and what it’s like to design for trust in an evolving AV world.

What do you work on at Uber?

I work on Uber’s AV supply management team, focusing on connecting what’s happening inside the vehicle to our support systems in real time. I cover areas like coordinated response, in-cabin video and audio, ML-based detection, and rider lifecycle experiences.

A lot of the work is about turning raw signals into something actionable, and making sure support and ops teams have the tools and context they need to step in when something goes off track.

At a high level, it’s about keeping the system responsive and reliable as we scale, especially as AV becomes a bigger part of the platform.

AV is still being figured out in real time. What’s exciting about building a product where there’s no playbook?

What’s exciting about building without a playbook is that there are no established patterns for how people should interact with AVs; especially in something as dynamic as ridesharing. So the work comes down to first principles: how people build trust in a system they don’t control, what information actually reassures vs. overwhelms, and when the product should be explicit versus invisible.

It pushes you beyond traditional product thinking into human behavior under uncertainty. You’re constantly balancing clarity, confidence, and simplicity while the system itself is still evolving.

That intersection of designing for both human psychology and an emerging technology is what makes it feel genuinely new.

Sean Hughes is a Senior Product Manager on Uber’s Delivery Marketplace team, where he works on the systems that power how millions of orders move in real time. From matching and pricing to new zero-to-one products, his work sits at the intersection of logistics, machine learning, and on-the-ground operations. We asked him what it’s really like to build in one of Uber’s most complex and fast-moving spaces—and who thrives in an environment that’s never done.

What have you worked on in Marketplace? Any projects to highlight?

Uber culture is very supportive of proactive ideas and action. As a result, I find you tend to work on a bunch of different projects and areas as you iterate and solve customer problems.

Over the last 6 years I’ve had the chance to work across matching optimization, pricing, ML prediction, and recently new E2E user facing products and internal agentic products. Two of my favorites were unlocking last mile delivery for big box retailers, and working with stores to structurally lower the costs of food delivery.

How would you describe what the Marketplace team actually is, and why is it such a compelling space to work in?

Uber’s marketplace is focused on the execution of deliveries, rides, and more. You can think of it as the “logistics brain” that connects different users like people ordering food, people delivering food, and restaurants selling food on Uber Eats. The Marketplace team leverages tech to make these complex realtime decisions in a way that is maximally great experience for all participants. For example predicting demand patterns, and balancing supply and demand in realtime.

Two things that excite me about the Marketplace team are the opportunity to tackle top priority problems for customers like affordability, and the very high caliber of folks on the team. I also enjoy the mix of on-the-ground logistics (often the best way to understand and solve problems at Uber is to get on the road or in a restaurant and experience them yourself firsthand) and hardcore optimization and ML.

Marketplace at Uber is real-time and never done. What kind of product manager thrives in that kind of environment?

"Two thoughts: First is that there is a LOT of things to be done in marketplace, and there is no one-size-fits all answer for who thrives. For example, there is complex optimization work, and also hardcore 0 → 1 product innovation happening at the same time. That said, in general I’ve found that a strong technical foundation is a good predictor of who will ship great products and enjoy the space."

Design at Uber shapes how the world moves, connecting digital experiences with real world moments across riders, eaters, and drivers & couriers. It is fast, complex, and deeply human work that lives beyond the screen, showing up in cities, streets, and everyday life. Here is a look at some of the people behind it and how they think, build, and design for the real world.

Joann,
Head of Design

Joann leads the team shaping the systems behind how the world moves. From the earliest product concepts to global launches, her team connects digital experiences with physical reality, designing products, features, and tools that operate in real time across cities, cultures, and millions of lives.

"Great design happens in the open; really great design happens out in the world. Design at Uber is a team sport played in the real world. We’re solving for global scale, local culture, and the high-stakes reality of moving people and things safely."

What does it actually mean to design for the real world, not just a screen?

At Uber, "designing for the real world" means orchestrating a global dance across 70+ countries and 10,000+ cities. We are managing a high-stakes, hybrid marketplace where human-led trips, autonomous vehicles, and instant delivery logistics must coexist seamlessly.

Our design anticipates "high cognitive load" moments: Every month, Uber facilitates over 1 billion trips and deliveries. Whether it’s a rider juggling luggage at a chaotic airport or a courier navigating a crowded grocery store, design isn't a button; it’s a successful handshake. Every design we create should be safe, intuitive, and personal.
We design for Emotion & Safety: The minutes before a car arrives or a meal is delivered are the most vulnerable. We use Emotional Design and "ambient" safety features to bridge the trust gap, humanizing the experience for riders, eaters, and drivers & couriers. We bring peace of mind and create moments that feel reassuring.
We design for the Global Landscape: From cash-collection interfaces in Brazil to replacing car icons with 3-wheelers and motorbikes in India, we design for local reality. This fundamentally changes pickup and delivery ETA logic and safety protocols.
We design for the Future: We are building for the next era of mobility where autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human drivers share the road. This requires Design for Innovation—creating new trust markers, AV pickup experiences, and seamless hand-offs between human-led and autonomous trips.

To solve these problems, we go beyond the Figma file. We design with empathy in the real world—through ride-alongs, sitting in the driver’s seat, and observing restaurant kitchens and merchant warehouses. We design with people’s real needs in mind.

What kind of designer thrives here, and who might struggle?

Uber is a high-velocity, impact-driven environment serving a dynamic marketplace. To succeed here, you must be more than a visual craftsperson—you must be a systems-level thinker.

Who might thrive:

The Radical Owner: You challenge the status quo. You don’t wait for a brief—you find real-world friction and build a case to fix it. You take pride in designing the seamless "handshake" between digital and physical. #BuildWithHeart
The Systems Architect: You design for the #OneUber ecosystem. You understand how a change in the Rider app impacts Driver earnings and flows through to the Merchant and Eater experience.
The Thoughtful Co-Creator: You treat design as a team sport. You partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Data Science to co-create solutions rather than hand them off.
The AI-Fluent Explorer: You bring a growth mindset and use AI as a design partner to accelerate your craft and help build intelligent systems for the future.

Who might struggle:

The Fixed-Mindset Pixel-Perfectionist: If your toolkit feels “complete” and you resist evolving with new methods, Uber’s pace of innovation will be challenging.
The Solo Contributor: This is a team sport played at speed. If you struggle with collaboration—or see Safety and Legal as blockers rather than design inputs—you’ll find it hard to scale impact.
The Screen-Locked Designer: If your process stays behind a desk without considering real-world conditions—like a rider with luggage or a driver in extreme heat—your solutions won’t hold up.

Charlie,
Sr. Director, Product Design

Charlie oversees Platform UX experiences, which include: Base Design System, accessibility, and the foundational experiences that power Mobility, Delivery, and emerging AI initiatives. His focus is on building the design infrastructure that millions rely on every day.

What does it mean to design the foundations that every product team builds on?

It means you’re not just designing screens, features, and products anymore — you’re designing the system that makes thousands of those possible. Foundations are the elements every team depends on but shouldn’t have to rethink each time: typography, components, motion, accessibility patterns, tokens, and interaction principles.

The goal isn’t consistency for its own sake. It’s about improving velocity while maintaining quality. When the foundations are strong, teams can focus on solving core user problems instead of rebuilding the basics every time they ship.

It also requires thinking in terms of durability over novelty. A strong foundation works across products, markets, and use cases — not just the one in front of you today. The clearest signal of success is when teams adopt it naturally because it makes their work easier.

How does scale change the way you approach craft?

At a small scale, craft is about the quality of what you personally design. At Uber’s scale, craft becomes about the quality of what the entire organization ships.

Your bar for detail increases, but your focus shifts. Instead of perfecting a single flow, you ask: is this pattern clear enough for 50 teams to use effectively? Does this interaction work across markets, devices, and edge cases? Does it raise the overall product quality, not just this one experience?

Scale pushes you to think in systems. The best craft at scale is simple, durable, and teachable. It’s not about designing something beautiful once — it’s about creating something strong enough to be repeated thousands of times without losing quality.

Kendall,
UX Research Manager

Kendall leads Research across Rides, Maps, and Autonomous Vehicles at Uber. A connector between people and technology, she focuses on solving real people problems behind complex systems. Over six years at Uber, she’s shaped the Rider experience, from home and airports to core booking, helping teams move from insights to clear points of view that guide what gets built next.

What moves you as a researcher, and how does that belief shape the way you lead UX Research?

“I’ve always been drawn to solving problems with real human impact, and I believe Uber is fundamentally a human-centered company. Without riders and drivers, there is no Uber, and their experiences directly determine whether the platform succeeds.

I see our responsibility as researchers not just to understand users, but to advocate for them — identifying what frustrates them, what blocks them from achieving their goals, and translating those insights into meaningful product improvements. I encourage my team to take ownership of these problems and ensure our work leads to tangible impact.

What makes research at Uber fundamentally different from research at other companies?

“What makes research at Uber unique is the scale and diversity of the problems we solve. Uber operates globally, serving people with very different needs, contexts, and reasons for using the product.

Because there’s no single ‘average user,’ our research must account for that complexity. We design studies that capture diverse perspectives and carefully consider what insights truly generalize versus what is context-specific.

This challenge ultimately makes our work stronger — forcing us to think globally from the start and ensuring the solutions we help shape can scale effectively across markets and user needs.”

Constance,
Content Designer

Constance leads content design across Delivery product teams, shaping the words that guide millions of people through discovery, search, shopping, fulfillment, membership, growth, grocery, retail, ads, and offers. Their work lives in moments that move quickly and carry real-world consequences.

What kind of content problems are big enough to be interesting to you — and how do you get to work on them at Uber?

“I’m drawn to big, messy content problems that go beyond the microcopy users see on the page. It’s about how information is structured so people can find it, how metadata is presented, and what UI is needed to make complex concepts clear.

At Uber, the diversity of use cases and tools means we can work across different users — from consumers to merchants to shoppers — and across surfaces, from the Uber Eats app to internal catalog tooling, and across global markets.

At Uber, the diversity of use cases and tools means we can work across different users — from consumers to merchants to shoppers — and across surfaces, from the Uber Eats app to internal catalog tooling, and across global markets.

We have to make tough prioritization decisions, but that also means we get to focus on solving the most impactful content problems.”

At Uber’s scale, words can influence millions of decisions a day. What does that level of impact feel like?

“It’s a privilege. We think deeply about how our words scale across cultures and languages, how users feel when they encounter them, and how those words shape behavior.

We also think in systems — patterns and structures. With so many teams producing content every day, our role isn’t to design every word, but to create guardrails and strategies that help content scale consistently and effectively.”

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Building what’s next: inside Product & Product Design at Uber

What do you work on at Uber?

AV is still being figured out in real time. What’s exciting about building a product where there’s no playbook?

What have you worked on in Marketplace? Any projects to highlight?

How would you describe what the Marketplace team actually is, and why is it such a compelling space to work in?

Marketplace at Uber is real-time and never done. What kind of product manager thrives in that kind of environment?

Joann, Head of Design

What does it actually mean to design for the real world, not just a screen?

What kind of designer thrives here, and who might struggle?

Charlie, Sr. Director, Product Design

What does it mean to design the foundations that every product team builds on?

How does scale change the way you approach craft?

Kendall, UX Research Manager

What moves you as a researcher, and how does that belief shape the way you lead UX Research?

What makes research at Uber fundamentally different from research at other companies?

Constance, Content Designer

What kind of content problems are big enough to be interesting to you — and how do you get to work on them at Uber?

At Uber’s scale, words can influence millions of decisions a day. What does that level of impact feel like?

Inside Uber

Three key learnings from Uber Latin America’s women in tech event series

Meet Imad Abusam: Uber’s Lead Product Manager at the helm of changing the way consumers gift

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Empowering Safe Rides: An Engineering-Product Collaboration in LatAm

Stay connected, move further

What do you work on at Uber?

AV is still being figured out in real time. What’s exciting about building a product where there’s no playbook?

What have you worked on in Marketplace? Any projects to highlight?

How would you describe what the Marketplace team actually is, and why is it such a compelling space to work in?

Marketplace at Uber is real-time and never done. What kind of product manager thrives in that kind of environment?

Joann, Head of Design

What does it actually mean to design for the real world, not just a screen?

What kind of designer thrives here, and who might struggle?

Charlie, Sr. Director, Product Design

What does it mean to design the foundations that every product team builds on?

How does scale change the way you approach craft?

Kendall, UX Research Manager

What moves you as a researcher, and how does that belief shape the way you lead UX Research?

What makes research at Uber fundamentally different from research at other companies?

Constance, Content Designer

What kind of content problems are big enough to be interesting to you — and how do you get to work on them at Uber?

At Uber’s scale, words can influence millions of decisions a day. What does that level of impact feel like?

Inside Uber

Three key learnings from Uber Latin America’s women in tech event series

Meet Imad Abusam: Uber’s Lead Product Manager at the helm of changing the way consumers gift

As Uber for Business grows, so does Eric

Empowering Safe Rides: An Engineering-Product Collaboration in LatAm

Stay connected, move further

Joann,
Head of Design

Charlie,
Sr. Director, Product Design

Kendall,
UX Research Manager

Constance,
Content Designer

Joann,
Head of Design

Charlie,
Sr. Director, Product Design

Kendall,
UX Research Manager

Constance,
Content Designer