OpenAI·Software Engineer

OpenAI Software Engineer interview experience

No offer

Medium

Negative

Candidate report, summarized by Dataford

I applied through the website and initially didn’t hear anything back, like I was being ghosted.

After I reached out, a recruiter contacted me and I did a screen. The interview itself felt straightforward: the questions were in the easy LeetCode range, and there was also a system design component.

Even though it didn’t feel hard on paper, I ended up failing because the system design interviewer didn’t like me. I didn’t get much clarity on what specifically went wrong beyond that, but the vibe during the system design part didn’t go my way. Looking back, I was surprised that something relatively routine turned into the deciding factor, especially since the rest of the process felt calm.

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