Uber quietly promoted an employee to be its new CFO in January

Uber has secretly had a Chief Financial Officer since January 2016, according to an H-1B visa application filed by the company.

It's been an open position since March 2015 when the company's former CFO Brent Callinicos stepped down from the role. However, Uber has stridently avoided publicly naming a replacement or interim chief financial officer, only referring to its highest-ranking finance employee, Gautam Gupta, as its Head of Finance.

Yet, an application for non-immigrant workers shows that Uber promoted an unnamed internal employee on January 16, 2016 to the role of Chief Financial Officer. The job has a base annual salary of $213,000, according to the filing.

Uber's legal team swore in the legal application that the statements were "true and accurate", meaning Uber has had a CFO at least on paper for the last nine months, if by title alone.

That person is likely Gupta, the Head of Finance, considering he has been running Uber's monthly investor phone calls and has taken on the responsibilities since Callinicos' departure.

Publicly, though, and for reasons unclear, Uber has yet to acknowledge it has a CFO. The company declined to comment on the visa application uncovered by Business Insider or acknowledge whether Gupta holds the title or not.

Uber has repeatedly demurred when asked about its CFO plans. The company declined to comment on an earlier Business Insider report about the CFO search in January, which was a week after the visa application had been filed. In February, Uber told the Wall Street Journal that it had a "deep bench" of employees and hadn't searched for a CFO, but still did not acknowledge that an employee had been promoted to the position.

Many have speculated that Uber's hesitance to formally name a CFO has been because it's prepping to go public. Hiring an IPO-experienced CFO - something Gupta is not -would officially start the clock ticking on when it would go public. An IPO is already something CEO Travis Kalanick has been wanting to put off until "as late as humanly possible."