Name: OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Process
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T05:00:01.000Z
Duration: 5 min 50 s
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Here's what we've learned about the software engineering loop at OpenAI.

They have a very practical leaning process.

The superlative

This is most evident in their system design round.

For system design, a lot of companies nowadays, they ask these theoretical problems that have nothing to do with the day to day work if you actually got the job.

So let's say you're interviewing any big tech company that doesn't work in video and they say, hey, design Netflix.

Or you're working at somewhere that's not a email or CRM company and they're asked design Gmail, right?

They're going to ask you questions that have to do exactly with what you'd be working on if you got the job.

So let's say that you're somebody who's interviewing there and they will ask you, hey, let's say you're trying to design a system and the system is giving out tokens to a bunch of different companies.

And we want you to be able to, as an internal tool in this system that we can only use as internal employees, not only monitor all the token usage, but

be aware that some companies are going to use way more than others.

And you know, what do we want to do about that?

So we want your system to have some, at least some, some solution for the discrepancy in how much token usage is going to happen in between companies.

The coding rounds are, they're, they're, they're hard in a way because they're a little bit different.

So this is actually pretty similar to Triplebyte's practical coding exam from a couple years ago.

Basically it's a problem with four gates and if you pass all four, you're in the extremely small percentage of people who have passed all four.

Another hard part about these kind of problems, that they're bespoke so they're not going to be on leetcode, but

are they as hard as elite code hard problem?

No, they're probably at a medium level, at least the first couple gates.

But the real, the real interesting thing about OpenAI to me is their culture.

So obviously the people that work there are working a lot.

We've all heard this, that they're making sometimes between seven and nine figures nowadays for engineers.

So I don't need to harp on any, any more about that.

But the culture piece is interesting because they're a new company and they don't have that much documentation about their culture.

And if you look it up, it doesn't seem very opinionated.

So from my take on the data that we have, what I would say is there are kind of like a less official Netflix.

When Netflix's culture came out in 2009, they really defined their culture and they spent a lot of money to define it.

AI probably they haven't had as much of a focus on defining their culture from the beginning.

They've been more just about hyper growth and they've done a really good job with that.

But the things that they kind of borrowed from Netflix would be two things.

So a strong team concept is a company like Google where, where teams get assigned work and there's a big emphasis on process.

OpenAI completely flips the script on that which they got from a Netflix style company, which is a flat organization where they purposefully reduce process.

So it's more about interpersonal work that you're getting done.

So basically we're piling all the work onto the shoulders of individuals, clearing out the blockers that would be in their way and then letting them cook.

They also have this kind of intensity in their culture that is also reminiscent of Netflix.

When they ask you why OpenAI, just like when Netflix asks you why Netflix, it might not be as long as a conversation as Netflix's interview will have that conversation be.

And that's because their process and their culture is so well documented, but it will be a stickler.

And they're asking really tricky questions like flipping that on its head and say, why not OpenAI?

Obviously if you're in their behavioral round, you're going to want to prep for, you know, the most obvious, you know, conflict questions.

You're going to want to prep for when there are competing priorities on teams.

That's the most common conflict in any engineering organization.

If there's conflict with sister orgs or sister teams and orgs, and

they obviously want to hear about scale, they obviously want to hear about novel problems, greenfield work that you did.

And again, if you really simplify it, you want to make your projects scream one thing in big bold letters to your interviewer and that's that weak team concept piece.

And if you can add on bits about scale and complexity and novel type of problems and large scope, especially scope tracking to the target level that you want, then you're sitting pretty.

Overall, very disorganized candidates report sometimes not hearing back for a long time or being totally in the dark.

But I'll tell you one thing that really surprised me about OpenAI.

they're actually desperate for good candidates to begin their interview process, which is interesting because you'd think, wow, they're so good.

Well, first of all, I'm emphasizing they're desperate for good candidates to begin their interview process.

They're not desperate to hire bad candidates and they're not desperate to hire good candidates, but

they're desperate to get more candidates in their pipeline that are quality simply because at the rate of hiring they're trying to do, they are trying to hire hundreds of engineers.

I was surprised to learn that they were so desperate to have good candidates start their interview process.

How do you start their interview process?

Well, if you have a connection of somebody who has actually worked with you in the past that works in OpenAI, that's obviously the best case scenario.

It's like any other tech company in the world, right?

That's going to get you in the door better than anything else.

Barring that, the best thing you can do is write a compelling message or have a compelling project to show some hiring managers at OpenAI.

So that is what we know about OpenAI so far.

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OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Process

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