Updated by OpenAI candidates
Applied Engineer, Backend Interview Experience
By the time I got to OpenAI, I’d interviewed with 11 or 12 companies, so my behavioral was very well rehearsed. I kept openings in my answers so if they followed up, they’d go where I wanted them to go.
Interview process
I got into the process through cold outreach plus a referral, and even that took a month or two of pushing before I got the first interview. After a pretty normal recruiter screen, I had two same-day phone rounds: one coding and one system design. The onsite was four rounds for me: coding, system design, technical deep dive on my own project, and behavioral. My big takeaway is that the coding bar is much more intense than standard big tech and feels closer to Anthropic, while the system design and behavioral pieces are more familiar. I was still waiting on the decision when we talked, and the biggest wildcard in the whole process was interviewer variability.
- Recruiter screen
- Phone interview
- Final round
Interview tips
I would not prep for this like normal LeetCode and call it a day. For coding, I would go deep on language internals, especially if you're using Python: iterators, generators, async, concurrency, that sort of stuff. For system design, I would make sure I actually understand distributed systems internals, scale, fault tolerance, and technologies like Kubernetes, not just high-level boxes and arrows. For the project deep dive, I would prepare extra material beyond the obvious happy path because they may ask you to keep going. And for the motivation side, if you're genuinely into AI it'll show, but if you're trying to fake it, there's a decent chance they'll catch that.
Company culture
My read is that they care a lot about whether you can independently solve hard problems, not whether someone can mentor you into the answer. The process felt less standardized than a place like Meta, and because the interviewer pool is smaller relative to demand, I think you see more variability, including the occasional disengaged interviewer. They seem to rotate through a question bank pretty fast, so leaked questions help, but only for a while, and the coding rounds still demand real depth. Also, they decide level after the loop, and there was zero comp discussion during my process, which to me felt like they're confident enough in their pay that they don't need to sell it early.
Questions asked
Overview
For the technical deep dive, I picked one of my own projects and basically did a reverse system design presentation. The style was very no-BS: mostly let me talk, interrupt only if they needed clarification, and then see whether I really owned the work.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
Pick a project and walk me through it.
Did you do this end to end?
What was the timeline from start to finish?
What did you learn from this project?
What other problems came up beyond the ones you already mentioned?
I presented an infra-heavy project with slides and focused on the biggest problems I ran into. Most of their questions were clarifying, like how much I owned end to end and how long it took, and then they asked what I learned. I had only planned to cover two major problems, but they wanted more, so I pulled in extra slides I'd prepared ahead of time for exactly that scenario.
Get full access with a membership, or share your experience to try it free.
