OpenAI·Software Engineer

OpenAI Software Engineer interview experience

No offer

Hard

Positive

San Francisco, CAPosted Apr 2026 · Candidate report, summarized by Dataford

My first touchpoint was a virtual phone screen focused on efficient memory management.

I was asked for an O(log N) solution, and I had to dig into details quickly.

The interviewer kept pushing with follow-up questions that tested edge cases, trade-offs, and potential optimizations. There wasn’t a system design portion in that round—everything stayed tightly around coding and data structures, and it became clear they were looking for depth rather than surface-level reasoning.

I didn’t get an offer afterward. The rejection didn’t surprise me so much as it highlighted how unforgiving that kind of deep follow-up could be when the time to refine answers is limited.

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