Glassdoor users rated their interview experience at OpenAI as 50% positive with a difficulty rating score of 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty). Candidates interviewing for Software Engineer SWE III and Security Engineer rated their interviews as the hardest, whereas interviews for Software Engineer SWE III and Security Engineer roles were rated as the easiest.
1 OA round, then called for an interview in which we need to solve 5 levels of LeetCode-style coding problems, need to pass at least 3/5 levels to pass this round,
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at OpenAI (San Francisco, CA) in May 2026
Interview
2 ML coding (60 min each)
2 General Coding (60 min each)
1 Hiring manager INTERVIEW(30 min)
I didn't get to onsite stage
But if i get there, it would be presentation + hm interview
2 ml coding rounds, 2 general coding rounds
ml codings: one pytorch round, one numpy round
general coding: 60-75min, doesn't require optimal solution, need to do it quickly to pass test cases
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- given set of human labeler, labeling tasks, and model, give balanced assignment schedule for each (human, task), (human, model), (model, task) pairs