I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at OpenAI in Feb 2023
Interview
Call with recruiter -> video call with hiring manager -> coding exercise with engineer Call with recruiter was pretty standard: discuss the company and mission, asked about my interested. The call with hiring manager was also pretty standard. Sounded like they are experiencing growth pains. The coding exercise was average to easy. Successfully finished the coding exercise but they went with another candidate.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
change directory via i.e. bash -> write a function given current directory and a new location return the new path
This whole process dragged on for about a month, much longer than I anticipated. It kicked off with a technical phone screen, where I was asked about data structures and algorithms. The DSA questions were tough, especially one regarding matrix traversal. Mid-way through the coding round, it clicked that I had tackled this exact problem on PracHub just days before, which helped me structure my answer. The onsite included system design questions that were challenging, but I didn’t end up receiving an offer. Overall, it was an intense experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an n x n matrix where each row and each column is sorted in ascending order, return the kth smallest element in the matrix. Walk through both the min-heap approach and the binary-search-on-value approach, compare their time and space complexity, and discuss which one you'd prefer for very large matrices that don't fit in memory.
2 rounds phone screen(1 coding + 1 system design) and 4 rounds onsite interviews(1 coding + 1 design + 1 deep dive + 1 behavior).
general good experience but need fast coding
I applied through other source. I interviewed at OpenAI (Dublin, Dublin) in May 2026
Interview
Two hiring manager interviews. Followed by a technical interview on coding and system design. Asked to design a devbox system (CI/CD pipeline). For the coding roundm I was asked to design the LRU/LFU cache.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked to design the LRU/LFU cache.
design a devbox system (CI/CD pipeline).
