OpenAI

Size:

1000+ employees

Founded:

2015

Website:

https://www.openai.com

About:

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and deployment company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in December 2015, its mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity. OpenAI develops advanced AI models and technologies, including the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) series, which powers applications like ChatGPT. The company focuses on both research and practical deployment of AI, emphasizing safety, transparency, and broad accessibility. OpenAI collaborates with various organizations and offers APIs for businesses and developers to integrate AI capabilities into their products and services.

OpenAI Interview Questions

Recently asked in real interviews

Questions

tracked from real interviews

Difficulty

4 Easy 33 Med 28 Hard

Rounds

5–7

phone screens + onsite loop

Interview Process

Recruiter Screen

Background, mission alignment, role fit · ~30 min

phone

Coding Phone Screen

1–2 problems on a shared editor · 60 min

coding

System Design Phone Screen

Open-ended design, scale, tradeoffs · 60 min

system-design

Onsite: Coding & System Design

2–3 rounds, harder problems and ML-flavored design · 60 min each

technical

Project Deep-Dive

Present a past project — decisions, tradeoffs, impact · 60 min

presentation

Hiring Manager & Culture

Mission alignment, collaboration, ambiguity · 45–60 min

behavioral

OpenAI levels candidates after the loop wraps up — everyone goes through essentially the same process. System design is the most heavily weighted skill, appearing in both phone screen and onsite.

Topics Covered

System Design Distributed Systems LLM Infrastructure Inference at Scale Algorithms Data Structures Concurrency API Design Streaming Systems Caching ML Systems Transactions Project Deep-Dive Behavioral Mission Fit

Recently Asked Questions

These questions were asked recently in real OpenAI interviews. Practice these and 4,000+ other questions from 1,000+ companies on Lodely.

Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflicting priorities with your stakeholders and how you secured alignment with them.

behavioralprogram-sense Medium

Design a streaming service like Netflix.

system-design Medium

Design and implement an in-memory key-value store that supports set, transactional begin, commit, and abort operations.

coding Medium

Design the OpenAI Playground.

artificial-intelligenceproduct-design Medium

Why do you want to work at OpenAI?

behavioral Medium