OpenAI Senior Engineer in San Francisco: Decode String, a GitHub Actions system design and Stream Parsing and Sliding Windows

Recruiter Screening

They were mainly checking your motivations on why you want to join and also about AI so it's probably good to say you think LLMs are the greatest things ever since that is the vibe I thought they wanted to hear.

Technical live coding challenge

This was a classic LeetCode style round where they asked me Decode String. I hadn't practiced this one exactly but I had prepared similar ones so I was able to get it done in the end but I was tight on time.

System Design

They asked me to design GitHub Actions which was interesting and they went deep at certain parts like how to manage queue fairness and mitigate noisy neighbours.

Final Round (2 technical + 1 behavioural)

I can't remember what the first coding challenge was but again it was a medium LeetCode style question. The second coding one was Stream Parsing and Sliding Windows. Luckily I had practiced it before and was able to remember it. Without having done it before I think I would have bombed it. The behavioral questions were all very standard. If you have stories ready for most of the questions in the playbook it's super easy.

I got the offer and accepted! I remember thinking there's no way I'll be able to pass but like anything the more you put in the more you get out so if you just grind the system design and coding questions you can do it!