The biggest leverage you can have in any negotiation is a willingness to walk away. If you negotiate from that perspective, you'll always be in a position of st

The biggest leverage you can have in any negotiation is a willingness to walk away. If you negotiate from that perspective, you'll always be in a position of strength. Decide if you are willing to walk away. If you passed the interviews with no missed questions and the company has already invested a lot of time into you, it would be idiotic of them to pass on you for a measly extra 15%. Think about it. They'd have to spend hours/days/weeks sourcing more candidates, who then would drop off at various stages of the interview funnel. This process is costly, wasting the time of recruiters, HR people, engineers, management etc etc. There is a real dollar value on that time. On top of that, costs like healthcare and on-boarding you into the team would cost tens of thousands. 15% is nothing compared to the total cost of hiring and ramping up an employee - especially relative to the value that you would produce (which is presumably a multiple of your salary). So decide if you're willing to walk away, decide what compensation you want, and be firm yet reasonable/friendly. If they don't budge, then simply walk away and I bet they will scramble to find a way to keep you. On the off chance that they don't, then don't feel bad; you did your best and you probably don't want to work somewhere that underpays you relative to the market anyway.