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Interview experiences
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Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Four Technical Problems, Told Not a Match
Question 1: 1NN This one's got a lot of write-ups already on the forum, so I won't go into detail here. Question 2: Infectious disease The first three parts were exactly the same as what's already on the forum. The fourth part: at any given moment, for a plant that isn't dead yet, if it has >=K infected neighbors, it enters a dead countdown (dies after D days); if it has >=T but <K infected neigh…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Onsite Dragged to November, Then Rejected
I applied in June, and they didn't reach out to schedule an interview until September. The phone screen went well, and they quickly set up the onsite (VO), but from there the scheduling turned into a mess — they kept changing the time on me, over and over, and it dragged all the way to November before I finished every round. Two weeks after that, I got the rejection. I won't go into every detail,…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Seven-Part Research Onsite, Offer a Week Later
You can find my phone screen writeup in a separate post. Since this was a recruiter reach-out, once I passed the phone screen I went straight to onsite with the team that wanted to interview me. The onsite was split into the following parts: Collaboration interview — we talked about the current SOTA in my research direction, its pros and cons, whether I had relevant technical experience, and how…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Transformer Bug Hunt with KV Cache from Scratch and a Five-Part Plant Infection Problem
Hi, I am preparing for OpenAI's ML coding interview and have summarized the ML coding questions mentioned in the OpenAI/Anthropic interview rounds I have given so far. Anthropic Research Fundamentals Round: It was related to implementing an ML algo and discussing various research/mathematical aspects around it. OpenAI ML Coding (Transformer Debugging): Debugging 4-5 implanted bugs in the transfor…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Research Engineer Interview Experience — Two Back-to-Back Screens, No Break, Rejected
Sharing a recent phone screen with OpenAI for an RE (security track) role. I got rejected — hope this helps people getting ready for one of these. Interview format Two rounds, 60 minutes each, back to back, with no break in between. There was no round-specific prompt, just the generic Technical Interview Preparation PDF the recruiter sends out, which I'm assuming everyone gets the same version of…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Research Scientist Interview Experience — New Card Game Coding Round That Tests Extensible OOD Design
The role was RS. I got a new coding problem, a card game. The first three parts were: first, implement a comparison where three of a kind > pair > high card; second, add a new hand so the order becomes three of a kind > flush > pair > high card; third, a discard rule (the rule I got is not quite the same as the one people posted on the forum, mine was to discard if it is not a pair). You can use…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Senior+ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Plant-Infection Coding Round Plus an In-Depth Management Interview
A friend referred me to a tech + management role that required both domain knowledge and management experience. It was a 60-minute coding round, and the question was the pretty common plant-infection problem. I wrote up three parts of it and ran out of time, and only touched on the fourth part without really finishing it. The interviewer was very quiet, almost no back-and-forth. One thing worth f…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Senior+ Software Engineer Interview Experience — Recruiter Screen With Zero Technical Questions
Got pulled in by a recruiter on LinkedIn, scheduled a 30-minute recruiter call. Writing this down right after while it's still fresh. Bottom line: it was pretty light, zero technical questions. Basically I gave my self-intro, and then she asked one question per experience on my resume without digging deep — felt like she was just confirming what's on the resume is real. Then she asked why I want…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — 75-Minute Malloc Screen, CoderPad Crashed, Advanced Anyway
There's not much to say about the question itself — it's just malloc. But the interview process wasn't quite what I imagined, so I'm sharing it for everyone's reference. The interviewer's background looked very, very strong. After reading the question, I went with the standard interview-report format and started with first-fit. The interviewer pressed for a ton of detail — what data structure to…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Brand-New Rectangle Coding Question and a Grid System Design
I just finished my OpenAI interview and wanted to share today's experience. Unfortunately, the coding round gave me a brand new question I had never seen before. The topic was Rectangle. Roughly, you maintain a 2D board, and requirements get added step by step: add rectangle remove rectangle undo after that there were follow-ups like removeAt / batch remove The whole thing was multipart, adding o…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Down-to-the-Wire Coding Round and “Design ChatGPT”
These were all questions I'd already seen before, and I still feel like I did so poorly — why can't I even execute cleanly on questions I already know... The coding round was GPU Credits II. I asked the interviewer a few clarifying questions, but he kept telling me to just go look for the answer myself in the test cases. I explained a brute-force approach, and the interviewer said he didn't fully…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — A GPU Credit Coding Question, Then a Surprise Fullstack Design Round
The coding round was the GPU credit problem, and it was actually pretty simple — the whole thing was only about 30-40 lines of code. add_credit subtract get_balance Three functions. I used two heaps to maintain the credit entities and the subtraction events. The first two functions were just simple heappush calls. get_balance was a little more complex — mainly because subtract needs to prioritize…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — a Referral Bump, a Rushed KV Store Round, and a CI/CD System Design
This was for an infra engineer role on the data platform team. We chatted briefly, compared backgrounds, and it seemed like a good match. He then asked if I had any connections at OpenAI. I checked LinkedIn and found two former coworkers who worked there, so I gave him their names. I'm guessing he used them as references, because two days later I got an email moving me into the phone screen stage…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — An Unfamiliar IoT Log-Platform Design Question
Coding: KV store. System design: This seemed to be a new question. I don't think I'd seen it in interview reports. Design an IoT log platform: Large numbers of devices continuously collect logs both online and offline, and upload them in batches when online. The platform can also send requests to devices asking them to record particular types of logs. The platform needs to receive and store logs…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Delayed Feedback in a Binary Search Problem
This was my OpenAI rejection experience. Both the coding and system design questions may have been new, because I had never seen either one before. The coding problem had two parts, and both seemed related to binary search. In the first part, I had to implement binary search to guess a secret number. There was a function that reported whether my guess was too low or too high, but its response was…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Devbox System Design Phone Screen, Built the Wrong Thing
I was asked the devbox design question and I failed to recognize it as such, since I didn't practice it much, nor was it among the hot questions on the forum. I ended up creating a generic container orchestration platform. Another interview-prep site I looked at does mark it as a MUST, so it would be useful for other candidates to peek at other question lists too. The interview experience was ove…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Distributed Node-Counting System Design Question
I've interviewed with OpenAI several times recently. This question gives you a root node and an initial API, sendAsyncMessage(nodeId, message). You need to implement receiveMessage(fromNodeId, message) yourself, and ultimately count how many nodes exist in the whole network. On the surface it looks a bit like DFS, but it's dressed up as a more realistic distributed scenario. Each node can be thou…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Fault-Tolerant Work Queue Coding Plus a Metrics Monitoring Design Round
Coding Fault-Tolerant Work Queue I solved the first part but got stuck on one silly bug which took a long time, but I got it to green eventually. I coded up the second part quickly but couldn't run the code due to time. The interviewer said it should be okay, that I was very close, and that I am good. System Design Metrics monitoring variation I did okay in this round. The interviewer didn't seem…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — GPU Credits and a Photo Storage System
This was my OpenAI software engineer technical screen, adding a recent data point. The coding problem was GPU Credit. I had seen a similar question before, so I finished it almost immediately. The task was roughly to implement a GPU-credit or resource-credit system that supported: Granting a quantity of credits with activation and expiration times. Subtracting or consuming credits at a particular…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Payment Holds, Charges, and Batch Processing
The question was to design a payment processor. The basic flow was that a merchant first sends a hold request, which we forward to the upstream payment network, then receive an approval or rejection. After a successful hold, there is a separate charge request later. Charges are then grouped by payment network into batch files and sent on a schedule. I'd prepared for payment-system questions befor…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Phone Screen, Onsite, and Way Too Many Reference Checks
I interviewed in April, and only got around to writing this up today. Hope it helps. Phone screen: Coding: Contagion — basically the same as the version posted on the forum. Part 1: only an infected state, how long until everyone gets infected. Part 2: building on part 1, add an immune state. Part 3: after being infected, you become immune after D days — how long until it stabilizes. Part 4: add…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Phone, Virtual Onsite, and a Silent Extra Round
Sharing my recent interview experience, hopefully it helps folks interviewing later avoid the same landmine. Phone Screen: Coding: Design a social media feed, Part 1 and Part 2. I didn't fully finish it, but I talked through my remaining approach. System Design: Sora. The interviewer pressed on some details, including why I chose AWS SQS and how to handle various failure cases. Virtual Onsite: BQ…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Positive Feedback, Rejected for a Better Background Match
Interview experience for an OpenAI team-specific hire. Just giving a little back to the forum. Phone screen: Coding: GPU Credit 2 System Design: Payment System About a week after the phone screen I had an HM chat, and after that I moved on to the onsite. Onsite: Coding: Plant Infection System Design: Design Steam Deep Dive HM Chat (with a neighboring team) The Deep Dive and the HM Chat were both…
Interview experiences · OpenAI
OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Recruiter Rescheduled a Month, Rejected After One BQ Call
The experience was pretty bad. The recruiter kept rescheduling. I applied in early July and was supposed to get a phone screen about a week later, but she had stuff come up plus vacation, so it didn't actually happen until early August. Then during the call she didn't turn her camera on, and the questions were all behavioral-type stuff — things like how do you manage people, what's a technically…