OpenAI Interview Questions

OpenAI Interview Questions

Practice 274 real OpenAI interview questions for 2026 — real interview questions drawn from actual interviews with detailed solutions. OpenAI interview questions on this page span Coding & Algorithms, System Design, ML System Design, Machine Learning, and Data Manipulation (SQL/Python) and cover roles like Software Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Android Engineer, and Frontend Engineer. For interview preparation expect a focus on production ML systems, scalable services, numerical correctness, experimental design, and communication: interviewers evaluate architecture decisions, tradeoffs, measurable impact, and the ability to ship robust systems under uncertainty. The loop runs stage-by-stage: a recruiter screen, a technical phone screen (coding or design), a virtual onsite with focused rounds (practical coding, system and ML design, model/debug deep dives, and behavioral/mission-fit), then team match and offer; typical timeline is about 4–8 weeks and difficulty is high. Practical coding leans toward real-world engineering problems rather than pure LeetCode puzzles. Software-engineer themes include consistent-hashing sharding, GPU job scheduling for text-to-video, payment systems with exactly-once semantics, and video orchestration. ML tracks emphasize resumable iterators and checkpoint/restore, streaming-entropy numerical stability, 1-NN implementations and debugging model backprop; data science focuses on churn, free-trial A/B tests, and SQL retention analysis. Use project deep-dives and worked examples when you prep.

274 Questions 1 Company08.01.2026
Showing 20 results
Role
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software EngineerSenior+ Locked

Design GPU Scheduling for a Video Generation Platform

Prepare for a OpenAI system design interview about design gpu scheduling for a video generation platform. This question focuses on requirements, archi...

System Design
28
0
201 people solved
Jun 27, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer

Implement a Simple Memory Allocator

Design and implement a simplified memory allocator exposing malloc(size) and free(ptr) over a single fixed-size heap (a contiguous byte array). The al...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
33
0
347 people solved
May 29, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Easy
Software Engineer

Design a sandboxed cloud IDE

System Design: Sandboxed Cloud IDE (Colab-like) Design a multi-tenant, browser-based cloud IDE/notebook that lets users run code inside an isolated sa...

System Design
372
2
7026 people solved
Jan 22, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
iOS EngineerSenior+

Design A ChatGPT-Style Assistant Product

Design a ChatGPT-style assistant product. Cover the user experience, conversation state, message streaming, model invocation, safety and error handlin...

System Design
11
0
86 people solved
Jul 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Tier-Aware AI Video Generation Service

Design a Tier-Aware AI Video Generation Service Prompt Design a service that accepts a generation request, runs an expensive video-generation workflow...

System Design
5
0
42 people solved
Jul 1, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer Locked

Refactor a Chatbot into Clean Object-Oriented Components

Prepare for a OpenAI software engineering interview question about refactor a chatbot into clean object-oriented components. The prompt highlights pra...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
11
0
110 people solved
Jun 22, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer

Design a Text-to-Video Generation System

Design a Sora-like text-to-video generation platform. Users submit a text prompt, optional generation settings (duration, resolution, fps, seed, model...

ML System Design
98
1
793 people solved
May 12, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer

Improve Training With Noisy Annotators

You are given a labeled training dataset as a Pandas DataFrame. Each row contains feature columns, an observed label, and an annotator_id identifying ...

Machine Learning
84
0
732 people solved
Apr 2, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer

Improve classifier with noisy multi-annotator labels

Problem You are given a text dataset for a binary classification task (label in $\{0,1\\}$). Each example has been labeled by multiple human annotator...

Machine Learning
899
3
6077 people solved
Feb 11, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer

Compute Matrix Prefix Products And Gradients

You are given $N$ square matrices $A[0], A[1], \dots, A[N-1]$, each of shape $D \times D$. Define the inclusive prefix (cumulative) products: $$Y[i] =...

Machine Learning
75
0
776 people solved
Apr 2, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Video Generation Service with GPU Fleet Management

Design a Video Generation Service with GPU Fleet Management Design a service that accepts text or media prompts and asynchronously generates videos. F...

ML System Design
4
0
54 people solved
Jul 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Machine Learning Engineer Locked

Implement Backprop for a Tiny Network

This question evaluates understanding of backpropagation, gradient derivation, numerical stability of softmax cross-entropy, and practical implementat...

Machine Learning
173
0
1487 people solved
Apr 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Debug MiniGPT and Backpropagate Matmul

This is a hands-on PyTorch screen with two independent tasks. You share a code editor with the interviewer and are expected to run the code, read trac...

Machine Learning
103
0
1039 people solved
Apr 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Design a RAG system with evaluation

Scenario Design a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system that answers user questions over a private corpus (internal docs, PDFs, knowledge-base a...

ML System Design
169
1
1622 people solved
Jan 6, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
iOS EngineerSenior+

Implement A Mobile Chat Interface In An Existing Codebase

You are given an existing mobile codebase and asked to implement a ChatGPT-style chat screen in about 40 minutes. Describe how you would read the proj...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
8
0
61 people solved
Jul 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

Design a Text-to-Video Generation Platform (Sora-style)

This ML system design question evaluates a candidate's ability to architect the infrastructure around a large generative video model, including asynch...

ML System Design
4
0
64 people solved
Jun 14, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Hard
Software Engineer Locked

A Project You Decided Not to Ship

This question evaluates judgment and ownership by asking about a project abandoned before release rather than one that shipped. It tests decision-maki...

Behavioral & Leadership
7
0
75 people solved
Jun 14, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Design an Agent Harness and Evaluation System

Design an Agent Harness and Evaluation System Design a harness and evaluation platform for a tool-using AI agent. The agent receives a user task, may ...

ML System Design
6
0
76 people solved
Apr 19, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Machine Learning Engineer

Debug a Concurrent Job Scheduler

You are handed a buggy Python job scheduler that runs many independent jobs concurrently. Each job has an ID, a callable to execute, a maximum retry c...

Software Engineering Fundamentals
44
0
365 people solved
Apr 3, 2026
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Medium
Software Engineer

Design a Slack-Like Messaging System

Design a Slack-like team messaging system focused on sending and receiving messages in real time. Your design should support workspaces with channels ...

System Design
61
0
945 people solved
Apr 26, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

How difficult are OpenAI interview questions for software and ML roles in 2026?
OpenAI interviews in 2026 are challenging but not purely puzzle-driven: they reward practical engineering, systems thinking, and domain depth. Expect coding rounds that favor real-world tasks (reading and modifying components, debugging, performance-minded implementations) over contrived LeetCode riddles, plus heavy system and ML design for senior roles. Difficulty varies by track: Software Engineer interviews emphasize scalable distributed systems and orchestration; Machine Learning and Research tracks dig deeper into math, experiment design, and paper-level reasoning. Overall the loop is selective; prepare for multi-hour virtual onsites and high bar on correctness, clarity, and tradeoff justification.
What is the OpenAI interview process stage by stage and where do different question types appear?
The process typically starts with a recruiter or sourcer screen (30 minutes) covering fit and logistics, then a technical phone screen or hiring manager call that mixes coding and role-specific questions. Many loops include a paid or take-home exercise in applied roles, then a virtual onsite of four to six rounds: coding/debugging, system or ML systems design, a technical deep dive on your past work, and behavioral/mission-alignment conversations, followed by team-match interviews. Coding and Algorithms and Data Manipulation show up in early screens and onsite coding rounds; System Design and ML System Design dominate senior SWE and MLE rounds; Data Scientist rounds focus more on SQL, experiments, and A/B analysis.
How should I schedule my preparation and what timeline is realistic before interviewing at OpenAI?
Plan a 4–8 week preparation block aligned to the role. Weeks 1–2: solidify fundamentals—data structures, Python or chosen language fluency, and SQL skills with joins, windows, and CTEs. Weeks 3–4: practice role-specific system problems and ML fundamentals—distributed systems, caching, consistency, and experiment design. Weeks 5–6: run mock onsites, do timed coding, and prepare technical deep dives (projects, papers, metrics). Final 1–2 weeks: polish behavioral stories, team-fit pitch, and revisit tricky system/ML topics like checkpointing, numerical stability, and orchestration. Allow extra time if you must rebuild ML coding from scratch or reproduce papers.
What specific subtopics and problem types recur for OpenAI roles (coding, system design, ML, and data)?
For Software Engineers expect distributed-systems themes such as consistent hashing rings with virtual nodes, GPU job schedulers for text-to-video workloads, exactly-once payment processing, versioned social follow graphs, and video generation orchestration. Machine Learning Engineers see resumable iterators with checkpoint/restore, streaming entropy and numerical stability, 1-NN implementations and matrix gradient tricks, debugging MiniGPT-style training, mining novel images, and noisy-annotator strategies. Data Scientists focus on SQL for repeat churn, free-month promotion A/B tests, signup/retention lift calculations, and experiment measurement. Mobile and frontend roles weight architecture (MVVM, Compose) and model-usage quotas.
What are standout preparation tips and common pitfalls to avoid for OpenAI interviews?
Emphasize production-ready thinking: write clear, testable code, explain failure modes, and design for observability and reproducibility. For ML/research tracks, be ready to discuss papers, experimental design, statistical power, and how you'd debug and reproduce training runs. Avoid over-optimizing for abstract puzzle tactics; interviewers want debugging instincts, tradeoff reasoning, and a path to shipable systems. Common pitfalls include ignoring edge cases (concurrency, exactly-once semantics), skimming data-quality implications in experiments, failing to justify metric choices, and not framing past work in terms of tradeoffs and measurable impact during technical deep dives and team-match conversations.

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