I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at OpenAI in Dec 2024
Interview
I was approached by a recruiter about an opportunity. While it was OpenAI's initiated converstation, the recruiter remained very non-communicative. Replies to my questions via email came either days later or never at all. I'm guessing there is some automation running against LinkedIn to scrape and reach out to potential fits. I proceeded with the process anyways just to see what it's like.
Chatted with a recruiter - this was a very standard conversation to see which of the available jobs I'd be interested in. Next were the systems design and coding exercise. Neither of these were very hard, very typical for all tech companies these days. The systems design interviewer was barely paying attention and was clearly working on something else and chatting with others while I was talking. You could see him typing, smiling at odd times and not hearing my questions. He didn't even bother to talk through the design. problem, just handed you a google doc write up to read and start designing.
The coding exercise was a lot more pleasant. The interviewer was very engaging and collaborative. She seemed more junior, but very sharp and I'm guessing a great person to work with.
I didn't pass one or both of these interviews I'm guessing, but again complete silence from recruiter and a generated template email was sent to me a few days later to say they won't go to the next stage.
I will recommend taking these interviews as practice interview for companies you'd actually want to work in. Don't expect a good process, but it is a good practice for other such interviews
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Systems design: Given a simple UI with some user preferences implement the system. The UI is already given to you so you need to work on APIs and server side of things
Coding test: Given a simple mockup implement that UI. Some CSS is already provided and an API to fetch the data also exists. The recruiter prep doc talked about structuring the code well, making sure all functions work, write CSS and write tests. There is no way you can do it all in 1 hour, so it's probably best to ask the interviewer what they expect
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
The technical round kicked off with a question about finding the length of the longest substring without repeating characters. I felt prepared, and as we discussed my approach and time complexity, I could sense I was on the right track. Later, there was a behavioral round where I described my experiences and team dynamics. The wild moment came when I realized I had literally seen this exact problem on prachub.com during my prep a week earlier. Afterward, I received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, a rewarding experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without repeating characters. Discuss your approach and time complexity.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at OpenAI (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
First round with HR: HR was a little impatient, probably very busy.
1 coding round, multi-part coding problem under 1 hour with tests passing. Plan your time wisely. Don't spend time on stuff like pseudo coding in earlier parts. Interviewer wasn't very engaged.
1 system design round. Interview was smart and nice.
Reject on the following day.
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