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Openai·Software Engineer·Onsite - System Design / Architecture·Senior

SeniorPrefer not to say
Jul 2026

Summary

OpenAI onsite system design round for a software engineering role. The session wrapped up early because the interviewer ran out of follow-ups, which honestly felt like a good sign, and the two of us just ended up chatting for the rest of the time.

Questions Asked (1)

Q1

Design a video generation system similar to Sora.

System DesignTechnical Trade-offsAdaptability & Ambiguity
Author's notes

Wasn't expecting to finish early but we burned through all the follow-ups and the interviewer just kind of shrugged and said there was nothing left to dig into.

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AI HintsAI Generated

Suggested Approach

Start by clarifying the scope and requirements of the video generation system, such as resolution, duration, and quality. Then, outline a high-level architecture that includes data processing, model training, inference, and serving, focusing on scalability and trade-offs. Finally, dive into key components like the diffusion model, distributed training, and inference optimization, while addressing challenges like latency and cost.

Pro tip: Emphasize the importance of data quality and diversity, and discuss how you would handle the computational challenges of training and serving such a model at scale, showing awareness of OpenAI's infrastructure.

1. Clarify Requirements

Ask questions to understand the expected video length, resolution, quality, and any constraints like latency or cost. This shows you can handle ambiguity and scope the problem effectively.

2. High-Level Architecture

Propose a modular architecture: data pipeline for collecting and preprocessing videos, a training pipeline for the generative model, and an inference service for generating videos. Mention the use of distributed systems and cloud infrastructure.

3. Model Design

Discuss the choice of generative model, such as diffusion models or transformers, and how to handle temporal coherence. Explain how you would train it, including data requirements and compute resources.

4. Scalability and Optimization

Address how to scale training and inference, using techniques like model parallelism, mixed precision, and caching. Discuss trade-offs between quality, speed, and cost.

5. Evaluation and Iteration

Describe metrics for evaluating generated videos (e.g., FVD, human evaluation) and how to iterate on the model and system based on feedback.

Key Points to Mention

  • Data collection and preprocessing at scale, including filtering and augmentation
  • Choice of generative model architecture (e.g., diffusion, autoregressive) and handling of temporal dimensions
  • Distributed training strategies (e.g., data parallelism, model parallelism) and hardware requirements (GPUs/TPUs)
  • Inference optimization techniques (e.g., quantization, distillation, caching) to reduce latency and cost
  • Evaluation metrics for video quality and coherence, and human-in-the-loop evaluation
  • Ethical considerations and safety measures, such as content moderation and bias mitigation

AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.