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OpenAI system design interview questions

2 questions on this site are reported in OpenAI software engineer interviews. Each is a guided run through requirements, back-of-envelope numbers, an interactive design, user flows and deep dives with interviewer follow-ups. Patterns covered: real-time, websockets, fan-out, chat, frontier, politeness, dedupe, scheduling, distributed-queues.

Attribution comes from public interview guides and candidate reports, not from OpenAI. It indicates where a question has been asked, nothing more.

🔒 Pro
hardreal-timewebsocketsfan-outchat

Design Slack

Real-time team messaging: channels, DMs, presence, history and search for millions of concurrent users.

asked at
14 components5 flows6 deep dives
StudyPractice
not started
🔒 Pro
hardfrontierpolitenessdedupeschedulingdistributed-queues

Design a Web Crawler

Fetch billions of pages a month politely, discover new links, skip duplicates, and keep the copy fresh without getting the crawler banned.

asked at
14 components5 flows5 deep dives
StudyPractice
not started

How to prepare for a OpenAI system design interview

Large-company loops run 45 to 60 minutes, expect numbers, and spend most of the time on deep dives. Work each question above in practice mode until you can produce the requirements, the estimates and the flows without looking, then read the interview framework guide for how to structure the hour. The other questions on the site teach patterns that show up in OpenAI interviews under different names.