OpenAI·Software Engineer

OpenAI Software Engineer interview experience

Candidate report, summarized by Dataford

I went through a full loop for an interview process that felt similar to what I’d heard about for OpenAI—comparing it with something like an experience at Anthropic too.

The biggest thing for me was that the questions weren’t really the typical “LeetCode-style” format.

It felt more like they were testing how I think through engineering problems rather than whether I can recognize known patterns from competitive coding. I didn’t have much “flashcard memorization” to lean on, and that made the whole loop feel different from the sites where most rounds start with standard algorithm tasks.

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