OpenAI·Software Engineer

OpenAI Software Engineer interview experience

Medium

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Candidate report, summarized by Dataford

My first step was a 75-minute system programming phone interview centered on implementing malloc.

I started with a linear scan approach using first-fit, and that took me about twenty-five minutes. Then the interviewer asked for an optimization, and I moved to best-fit by sorting free spaces with a heap structure so I could find the smallest suitable block.

What surprised me was how quickly it turned from “implement the basics” into “improve the strategy,” and how much they cared about the memory allocation tradeoffs rather than only whether I could get something working. After that call, I got scheduled for an onsite interview, and it would include another 75-minute system programming

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