OpenAI Software Engineer Interview Experience — Onsite with Grid Design and an Infection Coding Round

OpenAI·Software Engineer·Sep 2026
OnsiteIn progressmedium

I finished my onsite last week, so I'm sharing my experience before the result comes out.

Design: grid. I hadn't looked at any interview reports and was totally clueless. The interviewer was really nice and kept guiding me, and in the end I managed to come up with some stuff, but it's probably not looking good.

Project: I talked about a fairly big product that I recently led the launch of. The scope was huge but the tech complexity was nothing special. The interviewer barely talked, but in the middle he asked me a few API-related questions and a behavioral question. Overall it felt okay.

Coding: the classic infection problem. I got through three and a half parts. I finished writing the fourth part, but the second return value kept being wrong. Maybe I read the problem too fast and missed something. In theory it should be the final number of deaths (the first return value is the number of days).

Behavioral: a very nice manager, and we had a good conversation. He asked about AI safety and some basic Amazon-style behavioral questions.

On Tuesday I got an email from HR saying the debrief would be on Friday.

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

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Interview at a glance

Company
OpenAI
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
Onsite
Outcome
In progress
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Sep 2026
Questions from this interview
3 questions

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