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OpenAI Interview Experiences
3935 interview stories from candidates at 857 companies: how each round went, what was asked and how it ended. Every company page links to practice questions in the same style.
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49 results
- OpenAI Software Engineer interview: machine counting and rate-limit designOpenAI · Software Engineer · Jul 2026Offer
I started with a phone screen about my background and a basic data structures problem. From there, the interviews ramped up quickly. The process felt intense and focused on whether I could handle real engineering problem solving under pressure. The technical rounds included a complex challenge around counting machines and a system design question about rate limiting. I had already practiced rate-…
- OpenAI Software Engineer interview: two days of coding interviewsOpenAI · Software Engineer · Jul 2026
The process was straightforward and fast-paced. I had two days of back-to-back interviews, mostly coding problems, plus a hiring-manager interview. It felt practical, more about showing I could solve problems than getting lost in theory. The topics matched standard preparation: LeetCode-style practice covered the coding well, and I also prepared for the behavioral round. The turnaround after the…
- Phone, Virtual Onsite, and a Silent Extra RoundOpenAI · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026Rejected
Sharing my recent interview experience, hopefully it helps folks interviewing later avoid the same landmine. Phone Screen: Coding: Design a social media feed, Part 1 and Part 2. I didn't fully finish it, but I talked through my remaining approach. System Design: Sora. The interviewer pressed on some details, including why I chose AWS SQS and how to handle various failure cases. Virtual Onsite: BQ…
- Recruiter Screen With Zero Technical QuestionsOpenAI · Software Engineer · Senior+ · HR Screen · Jul 2026In progress
Got pulled in by a recruiter on LinkedIn, scheduled a 30-minute recruiter call. Writing this down right after while it's still fresh. Bottom line: it was pretty light, zero technical questions. Basically I gave my self-intro, and then she asked one question per experience on my resume without digging deep — felt like she was just confirming what's on the resume is real. Then she asked why I want…
- Rejected After the Recruiter Call, Before Any Technical RoundOpenAI · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
I was pretty surprised. I never expected to fail at this round. A friend referred me. The role is not in the AI area, and it matches my current job by more than 80%. When I scheduled the call with the recruiter, I asked if there was anything I needed to prepare. The recruiter said no preparation was needed, so I assumed it would be a very casual chat to get to know my basic info. These are the qu…
- Two Onsite Rounds, Same Day, Coding and System DesignOpenAI · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026Rejected
I had two rounds back to back on the same day, each about 60 minutes. The interviewer was about 5 minutes late both times. The coding round interviewer was really nice, but the second round felt a lot more serious. Overall the experience was fine. I got the rejection letter the next day. The coding round was a multipart social graph + snapshot problem. The first question was the same as H2H. The…
- A malloc Phone Screen and a Surprise Debugging RoundOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Apr 2026
Sharing an OpenAI interview report. Aside from the phone screen, everything was a question I'd already seen before — because I over-prepared from question banks and cared way too much about the outcome, I interviewed badly. I really regret it. The phone screen covered malloc, which others have already shared — the details aren't much different. There were two parts: first a naive first-fit soluti…
- Four One-Hour Rounds in a Single Phone ScreenOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Apr 2026In progress
Sharing my recent OpenAI Research phone screen. Round 1: general coding, 1hr Debug a distributed system. They gave me a buggy job scheduler written in Python — I had to check for data races, deadlocks, lock contention, and whether the rate limiter was implemented correctly. Partway through I had to write my own test cases to confirm the scheduler actually worked, then calculate how long the sched…
- Four Technical Problems, Told Not a MatchOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Apr 2026Rejected
Question 1: 1NN This one's got a lot of write-ups already on the forum, so I won't go into detail here. Question 2: Infectious disease The first three parts were exactly the same as what's already on the forum. The fourth part: at any given moment, for a plant that isn't dead yet, if it has >=K infected neighbors, it enters a dead countdown (dies after D days); if it has >=T but
- Phone Screen, Onsite, and Way Too Many Reference ChecksOpenAI · Software Engineer · Onsite · Apr 2026
I interviewed in April, and only got around to writing this up today. Hope it helps. Phone screen: Coding: Contagion — basically the same as the version posted on the forum. Part 1: only an infected state, how long until everyone gets infected. Part 2: building on part 1, add an immune state. Part 3: after being infected, you become immune after D days — how long until it stabilizes. Part 4: add…
- Seven-Part Research Onsite, Offer a Week LaterOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Apr 2026Offer
You can find my phone screen writeup in a separate post. Since this was a recruiter reach-out, once I passed the phone screen I went straight to onsite with the team that wanted to interview me. The onsite was split into the following parts: Collaboration interview — we talked about the current SOTA in my research direction, its pros and cons, whether I had relevant technical experience, and how…
- Tricky IDE Quirks and a Surprise Chess Game System DesignOpenAI · Backend Engineer · Technical Screen · Apr 2026
Let me start by saying you should try to avoid this interviewer if you can. He had a really heavy accent and I couldn't understand him at all, and when I asked questions partway through the interview, he just kept going silent. The question was the IP address problem. I got to the third part, the CIDR block part, but when I ran it the answer was wrong. After the interview ended I thought about it…
- Distributed Node-Counting System Design QuestionOpenAI · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Mar 2026
I've interviewed with OpenAI several times recently. This question gives you a root node and an initial API, sendAsyncMessage(nodeId, message). You need to implement receiveMessage(fromNodeId, message) yourself, and ultimately count how many nodes exist in the whole network. On the surface it looks a bit like DFS, but it's dressed up as a more realistic distributed scenario. Each node can be thou…
- A LinkedIn Cold Ask, a Take-Home, and a Python Debug StumbleOpenAI · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
I didn't expect to actually get an interview invite from OpenAI — I'd only asked a recruiter about it on LinkedIn. My own level isn't really there, so I went into it purely as an experience, but the experience was great, worth writing up a post-interview reflection. Some background: I do data work at a big company, and my job search has mainly focused on experimentation and causal inference. Afte…
- A Simulation-Style Infectious Disease QuestionOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I interviewed onsite for a completely new question I had never seen before -- five parts in total, and I only managed to finish three, so I definitely failed this round. The prompt was described as "simulation style." Beforehand, people on the forum said it would probably be GPU-related, so that is what I prepared for, but it turned out to be about infectious disease instead. Posting this so othe…
- Onsite Dragged to November, Then RejectedOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I applied in June, and they didn't reach out to schedule an interview until September. The phone screen went well, and they quickly set up the onsite (VO), but from there the scheduling turned into a mess — they kept changing the time on me, over and over, and it dragged all the way to November before I finished every round. Two weeks after that, I got the rejection. I won't go into every detail,…
- A Rate-Limited Dependency Version Search ProblemOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
First question: the topic was dependency version check. Part 1: they give you a list of dependency versions, for example [103.003.02, 103.003.03, 203.003.02]. Each version may or may not support the current feature, and you need to find the earliest version that supports it. Part 2: they gave a bunch of corner test cases, and some of the cases actually expose more requirements — your earlier assu…
- a Referral Bump, a Rushed KV Store Round, and a CI/CD System DesignOpenAI · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2025Rejected
This was for an infra engineer role on the data platform team. We chatted briefly, compared backgrounds, and it seemed like a good match. He then asked if I had any connections at OpenAI. I checked LinkedIn and found two former coworkers who worked there, so I gave him their names. I'm guessing he used them as references, because two days later I got an email moving me into the phone screen stage…
- A GPU Credit Coding Question, Then a Surprise Fullstack Design RoundOpenAI · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2025In progress
The coding round was the GPU credit problem, and it was actually pretty simple — the whole thing was only about 30-40 lines of code. add_credit subtract get_balance Three functions. I used two heaps to maintain the credit entities and the subtraction events. The first two functions were just simple heappush calls. get_balance was a little more complex — mainly because subtract needs to prioritize…
