If you get an offer (at any level), there's no harm in trying to negotiate a bit. I've never heard of a situation where you say, "I'm really excited about this

If you get an offer (at any level), there's no harm in trying to negotiate a bit. I've never heard of a situation where you say, "I'm really excited about this offer, but I was hoping for X salary-wise." and the company rescinds the offer. More likely is they say, we can't do X, but we can do something between the original offer and X. Occasionally, they'll say "sorry the salary for this position is fixed, you'll have to decide if you want to take the position for the original offer." Basically negotiating is all upside (so long as you're not wildly off base in what you ask for), either you get some bump, or you fall back to the original offer.