OpenAI

What to know about the loop

• 1Loops move fast. Two to three weeks from screen to offer if you are responsive.
• 2Coding rounds are practical. Less LeetCode trick, more "build this thing in 45 minutes".
• 3System design covers inference serving, RAG, eval pipelines, training infra at scale.
• 4Behavioral is light but they probe for taste and judgement.

> **How current is this?** Checked 3 August 2026. This company does not publish its interview structure, so everything here is what candidates consistently report. Loops change without announcement, so treat this as a guide rather than a specification.

OpenAI's loop is fast. Two to three weeks if you move.

The coding rounds are less about LeetCode and more about building something practical in 45 minutes. Think "write a small library", not "find the kth largest".

System design has shifted heavily toward AI infrastructure problems. Inference serving, batching, RAG pipelines, eval systems, training data pipelines. If your last design prep was Twitter and Uber, refresh on these topics.

Behavioral is light but they care about taste. Why did you build the thing the way you built it.

What would you do differently. They probe for judgement and ownership.