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Real Interview Experiences

Learn what to expect directly from candidates and interviewers who've been through it.

Updated 13 hours ago
OpenAI
Technical Program Manager
OpenAI·Posted 2 weeks ago · Jun 2026

It was very conversational. The recruiter call was pretty easy and direct. The next round was with two interviewers and I was given 45 minutes to dive deep into a technical challenge or program I solved or drove. It was very very conversational and while they probed it was not very adversarial

3 rounds1 question
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OpenAI
Research Engineer
OpenAI·Posted 1 month ago · May 2026

The problem was challenging. There were many conditions you had to satisfy and some aspects were a bit underspecified. The interviewers were stone faced and gave zero commentary. I ended up making a small bug which I wasted about 15 minutes trying to fix.

1 round
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OpenAI
Software Engineer
OpenAI·Posted 1 month ago · May 2026

It was very rigorous but the recruiter was actually accurate and helpful about what to prepare, which is rare and I really appreciated that. The process consisted of a system design interview and a coding interview. The system design round focused on designing a payment processing system. The interviewer pushed beyond a basic design and spent a lot of time exploring failure modes, retries, idempotency, operational concerns, and correctness under real-world conditions. It felt closer to designing something that could actually run in production than many system design interviews I've done elsewhere. The coding round was also fairly challenging. The problem itself wasn't especially difficult from an algorithmic perspective, but it required careful handling of edge cases and a precise understanding of the requirements. I felt like there was less emphasis on LeetCode-style tricks and more emphasis on building a correct, production-quality solution. What went well was that the interviewers were engaged and clearly knowledgeable. The conversations felt collaborative rather than adversarial. What didn't go well, at least for me, was that I underestimated how much depth they expected around correctness and edge cases. In hindsight, I would have spent more time validating assumptions and thinking through failure scenarios before diving into implementation.

2 rounds3 questions
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OpenAI
Software Engineer
OpenAI·Posted 1 month ago · May 2026

The process was short-lived for me, unfortunately. The coding interview was an hour long, and the question was similar to the game of life, but for an infection spreading across a 2D array. I approached it much too methodically - explaining my approach before implementing, like I've learned to do from past technical interviews. The thing about this one is that theres FIVE long parts, and you have to pass the test cases for each part before you move on to the next. If I could do it again I would be frantically coding from the very beginning - waste no time. Add print statements to debug. The interviewer doesn't help or guide much, its mostly on you.

1 round2 questions
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OpenAI
Software Engineer
OpenAI·Posted 1 month ago · Apr 2026

The bar is pretty high, but the process is very smooth. The coding and system design need to be completed fast.

2 rounds
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OpenAI
Product Manager
OpenAI·Posted 1 month ago · Oct 2025

Pretty standard product sense and product analytics interviews, similar to Meta-style PM interviews.

1 round
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OpenAI
Software Engineer
OpenAI·Posted 2 months ago · Jun 2025

Coding round went fine. Need to get to a working solution fast before polishing or optimizing approach. For the system design need to cover both frontend and backend pieces. Focusing on just one piece might not help your case.

2 rounds
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OpenAI
Product Manager
OpenAI·Posted 2 months ago · Jun 2025

Pretty tough, long, and drawn out.

4 rounds1 question
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OpenAI
Technical Program Manager
OpenAI·Posted 2 months ago · Mar 2024

This was one of the hardest loops I had completed. The hiring manager screen and behavioral interviews were standard. The system design interview for a TPM was challenging. The expectations for a TPM included a great deal of technical depth.

5 rounds5 questions
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