Behind the scenes of Uber Freight’s 2022 Hackathon

By Val Marchevsky, Head of Logistics Technology + Somasekhar Korapati, Engineering Manager at Uber Freight

Hackathon is an annual company tradition for Uber Freight, bringing together our world-class team of experts to sprint toward an innovative, prime tech solution. The 2022 edition was more unique than most as it marked the first Hackathon where legacy Uber Freight and Transplace technology teams came together to collaborate on one platform. 

Driven by Uber Freight’s commitment to developing products that solve for real customer challenges, the 2022 Hackathon that we hosted last quarter showcased and celebrated our broader spirit of innovation. Delivering world-class customer experiences is our main priority, and this event helped us double down on that mission.

Our long-standing tradition of sparking creativity in the tech community inspired this year’s Hackathon. With over 75 participants across 15 teams, employees from different tech stacks and engineering practices gathered to learn from each other and collaborate on new ideas.

“We’re grateful to everyone who participated and infused so much energy into this year’s Hackathon,” said Lior Ron, CEO and Founder at Uber Freight. “Especially in a volatile logistics industry that continues to face new market challenges every day, tech transformation is critical to keep supply chains moving. Our top minds came together to find new, innovative solutions and make our tech stack as efficient as possible.”

“Hackathons often highlight what’s possible when brilliant minds in engineering come together to solve real world business problems in a limited period of time – and this year’s Hackathon did not disappoint,” said Raj Subbiah, Chief Product Officer at Uber Freight. “Our 2022 edition served as a catalyst for innovation – unlocking new dimensions in our product suite, some of which we’re thrilled to see reflected on our 2023 product roadmap.”

Our 2022 Hackathon was a driver for so many unique and innovative ideas, such as using QR codes to build a digital check-in experience for carriers to save time and effort, and reduce congestion from facility gates – a win-win for customers and carriers.

A host of other creative ideas were built to improve the logistics experience for customers – including leveraging cutting-edge indexing technology to show enhanced, relevant search results in a unified load board. Additionally, one team rebuilt instant rate quotes using a combined tech stack and modernized design language – answering the question of how to create a unified and seamless experience for end users. Another project established a real-time notification center  for shippers, solving the problem of digging through emails for important shipment dates.

It’s inspiring to see our vision of a combined platform become a concrete, tangible reality. Uber Freight is constantly thinking about new ways to help our customers and solve industry challenges with technology. To learn more about how we’re enabling a new era of logistics management, read our recent blog post here.