Uber set to open first tech center focused on safety in Latin America

Since CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made safety Uber’s top priority, the company has been working constantly to raise the bar to protect drivers and riders.

As part of this effort, the company has announced that it will open its first Technology Development Center in Latin America, focusing on safety and will be based in São Paulo. The center will start its operations in the fourth quarter of this year.

About 150 specialists will work at this new center to develop technologies that may become new features and functions globally. With an investment of BRL 250 million (~USD 63 million) in five years, the site will also be Uber's first technology center in Latin America. The other existing tech centers are in Louisville, New York, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle, in the US; Amsterdam, Paris, Sofia, and Vilnius, in Europe; and Bangalore and Hyderabad, in India.

The Development Center in Brazil will initially focus on advanced technologies to improve safety around the world, working with advanced telematics, machine learning, high scale distributed systems, real time data processing and mobile development, among others.

"We believe that technology can play a critical role in solving for some of modern day mobility’s greatest safety challenges, worldwide," explains Pradeep Parameswaran, President, Uber IndiaSA. "Across emerging markets like Brazil and India, there is an acute need and shared responsibility to deploy the best of engineering talent towards innovations that can make our cities more liveable and improve outcomes around road, rider and driver safety as well as towards reducing congestion and pollution. A dedicated tech center echoes our deep and enduring commitment to safety as a company.”

Uber has constantly introduced new functions to improve rider and driver safety. Two recent examples include a machine learning model to reduce safety risks, and the Safety Toolkit released in July which works as an one stop-shop for all Safety features in the Uber app.