What is Interview Forge?

Interview Forge helps you practice mock interviews, follow study plans, track career goals, review learning analytics, and prepare across 36 pages.

Search in Rotated Sorted Array at Uber — Interview Guide

How to approach Search in Rotated Sorted Array in a Uber interview: the optimal approach, what Uber interviewers look for, and company-specific tips.

Updated 2026-09MediumBinary Search

The problem at Uber

Search for a target value in an array that was sorted then rotated at an unknown pivot, in O(log n) time.

Uber uses this problem to assess real-time systems and marketplaces. Expect Uber-specific follow-ups that tie the solution back to production reasoning and the company's engineering bar.

Key concepts

At each mid, one half is always sorted; identify it by comparing nums[mid] with nums[left].
If the target lies in the sorted half, search there; otherwise search the other half.
Handle duplicates carefully — when nums[left] == nums[mid] you cannot tell which side is sorted.

Approach

def search(nums, target):
    l, r = 0, len(nums) - 1
    while l <= r:
        m = (l + r) // 2
        if nums[m] == target: return m
        if nums[l] <= nums[m]:
            if nums[l] <= target < nums[m]: r = m - 1
            else: l = m + 1
        else:
            if nums[m] < target <= nums[r]: l = m + 1
            else: r = m - 1
    return -1

What Uber looks for

Real-time and distributed systems intuition.
Geospatial and concurrency reasoning.
Pragmatic, production-minded engineering.
Ownership of features end-to-end.

Unlock the full guide

Premium members get every DSA, system design, company and role interview guide — plus AI practice, mock interviews, and analytics.

Unlock with Premium