Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at OpenAI with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 38.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 19 days to get hired, when considering 6 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at OpenAI overall takes an average of 30 days.
Common stages of the interview process at OpenAI as a Senior Software Engineer according to 6 Glassdoor interviews include:
Skills test: 29%
Phone interview: 24%
Presentation: 18%
Personality test: 12%
One on one interview: 12%
Background check: 6%
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The interview process took a few weeks in total. First there was an initial phone screening, then two technical interviews, and then a final day with 3 interviews. Entire process felt smooth and professional
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Final round had behavioral, project presentation, and general leetcode-esque question
The process is intense and highly focused on practical engineering rather than just theoretical algorithms. After the initial recruiter screen and a technical phone screen, there was a heavy emphasis on a "Learning Sample" or a take-home style project that you then have to defend in a deep-dive session. They want to see how you handle real-world system bottlenecks, concurrency, and large-scale data ingestion.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
One part involved optimizing a distributed system mockup where I had to identify a race condition under high load. It wasn't about memorizing a textbook answer; it was about live debugging and showing your thought process in a production-like environment.
Had an initial screen with a recruiter. He described the teams that are hiring and what they look for as well as outlining the rest of the process. It sounded like a good fit but they didn’t think they had any remote opportunities.