OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Extra System Design Round, Then a Template Rejection

OpenAI·Software Engineer·Jul 2026
Technical ScreenRejectedmedium

Coding: It was the same as what's in the other interview write-ups, the chatbot that needs a refactor. The only difference was that for every person who is away, whenever someone @s them, the bot just directly replies with the away status.

SD: CloudIDE. Maybe the interviewer wasn't very clear on what they wanted either, so I gave them an SSH version, where one person or several people can share a host.

The next day the recruiter said there weren't enough data points for SD and I needed an extra SD round.

Extra SD: design a system where users can upload, download, and delete photos. But if a photo's content SHA256 is the same as an existing photo, only one copy can be kept.

The day after that I got a template rejection email.

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Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
OpenAI
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
Technical Screen
Outcome
Rejected
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Jul 2026
Questions from this interview
2 questions

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