Uber Interview Experience (Feb 2026)

Applied via LinkedIn referral. Recruiter reached out on 16th Feb and scheduled first round on 27th Feb.

Round 1 – Coding

The interviewer was Senior SDE.
5 minutes intro

Problem:
Given a sorted array, reorder the original elements based on the sorted order of their squares.

Input:  [-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
Output: [0, -1, 1, -2, 2, -3, 3, 4]

Approach:

• Discussed brute force (square + sort) — didn’t code.
• Then used a two-pointer / merge-style approach leveraging sorted input.
• Implemented successfully.

Follow-up:

Return the k-th element from the above square-sorted order.

Input:  [-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4], k = 3
Output: 1

• Extended earlier logic to return k-th element.
• Then asked to optimize further.
• Proposed a binary search-based idea.
• Implemented it, but it failed for some edge cases. Couldn't complete.

5 minute outro, que-answer