OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process
Real candidates share what happened, how many rounds they had,
and how the experience turned out.
Based on 72 interview experiences · FREE TO READ
Candidate interview experiences
First-hand accounts from people who interviewed at OpenAI.
OpenAI
Software Engineer
Entry Difficult Negative experience No offer 2 rounds
Interview process
Recruiter call Onsite
Interview formats
Behavioral
Recruiter Screen Goal: Verify if you meet the requirements and spot any red flags Keep answers simple and try not to get too technical Build rapport since recruiters can be your ally later Ask about the team and culture 2. Hiring Manager Interview Goal: Decide if you can actually perform the job Use concrete examples of your previous work Avoid vague or generic answers Ask thoughtful job related questions Build rapport since this is your potential boss
Confirmed questions3 questions
- What do you know about our company? What do you think we should be doing differently?
- What would you say are your strengths?
- What would you say are your weaknesses?
OpenAI
Software Engineer Infrastructure
Mid Very difficult Negative experience No offer 1 round About 2 weeks
Interview process
Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical System Design
This is the most disgusting and ridiculous interview I have seen in my 10 years of IT experience. First, this role had no clear JD (was told that it’s being fleshed out). The panelist confirmed that the role requires the knowledge of terraform, kubernetes. First round was a design round and here comes the most funniest part. I was told to build the API level design for a system. For developers and application architects, this absolutely makes sense. How many engineers who has infra knowledge is being involved in application architecture these days? They think they need gen agent to work with them and no clue on why they want to hire humans. Will never recommend people to appear for this company.
Confirmed questions1 question
- Design a system like GitHub and describe how a user would interact with it.
OpenAI
Software Engineer
Mid Difficult Positive experience No offer 1 round
Interview process
Technical screen
Interview formats
Technical System Design Behavioral Other
I just finished my interview at OpenAI for an ML engineer position. The process was intense but exciting. We dug into cutting-edge ML topics, especially large language models and multimodal AI. They challenged me with difficult technical questions and scenarios. I also talked about my views on AI ethics and how I see the future of the field. Overall, it was a tough but stimulating experience.
Confirmed questions1 question
- How would you design an LLM-powered enterprise search platform?
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Questions
Quoted word for word from OpenAI interview reports.
“Implement a basic web crawler in Go.”
Read reports →“Implement code to build a simple DB.”
Read reports →“Implement a GPU scheduler system that works using credits.”
Read reports →“Implement a web crawler, with focus on multithreading/multiprocessing.”
Read reports →“- - design chess.com, improve/optimize this code”
Read report →“Design a 2 player battle game.”
Read report →“Design an API for a memory-resident database.”
Read report →“Implement an in memory db using any language you want”
Read report →“Build a database ORM step by step.”
Read report →Formats, difficulty and experience
Across all 72 OpenAI interview reports.