Glassdoor users rated their interview experience at OpenAI as 40% positive with a difficulty rating score of 2.8 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty). Candidates interviewing for Solutions Engineer and Senior Software Engineer rated their interviews as the hardest, whereas interviews for Research Engineer and Analyst roles were rated as the easiest.
The hiring process at OpenAI takes an average of 14 days when considering 5 user submitted interviews across all job titles. Candidates applying for Research Engineer had the quickest hiring process (on average 14 days), whereas Research Engineer roles had the slowest hiring process (on average 14 days).
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