An OpenAI Engineer Explains How She Was Hired in a Week

An engineer at OpenAI says the company’s hiring process can move from first contact to a signed offer in a week.

Jerene Yang, a team lead for synthetic data generation at OpenAI, said on an episode of the “AI Across Borders” podcast published Wednesday that her interview process was “extremely quick, extremely efficient, and very no-nonsense.”

Yang joined OpenAI’s San Francisco office in October 2024. Before OpenAI, she was a senior engineering manager at Google, where she led Cloud Spanner and managed large-scale database systems, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Yang said a recruiter reached out to her on a Monday about a role leading a team that aligned with her background. She agreed to an initial conversation, which took place the following day with the hiring manager and technical lead.

By Wednesday, Yang completed the full interview, which she said ran from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. She received an offer on Thursday and signed it the next day.

Yang said one key part of the process was an interview round known as a “technical deep dive” — or a “research discussion” for research-focused roles.

Candidates can choose a topic to discuss with a researcher. For engineering candidates, that often means walking through systems they have built, explaining the problems they were trying to solve, and describing the trade-offs behind key decisions.

“You really get to see the intellect of your interviewer as well and how much they know about your area,” Yang said.

Beyond technical skills, Yang said there is one skill candidates must master if they want to work at OpenAI: being “brutally efficient” with their time.

With many projects underway, employees need to focus only on work where their skills offer a clear advantage, she said.

Yang added that candidates should lean heavily on AI tools and think about task automation.

According to OpenAI’s interview guide, candidates typically go through résumé screening, introductory calls, skills-based assessments, and final interviews. The final interviews typically span four to six hours over one or two days.

Interviews are designed to focus on candidates’ areas of expertise and push them beyond their comfort zone, with an emphasis on problem-solving, communication, and collaboration, OpenAI said.