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Spotify Salary Negotiation Guide

Do we like negotiating with Spotify?

Spotify is open to negotiating if you have leverage and set it up right. However, recruiters are very transparent about the fact that they don't pay top of market, and they use this as justification to not match other offers. You need to be prepared to handle this pushback.

Spotify's compensation structure

  • Base Salary
  • Spotify Equity Package (see Spotify's RSU vesting schedule below)
  • Stock Refreshers

Spotify very rarely offers signing bonuses and if you are successfully able to negotiate one it will be small relative to FAANG offers.

Spotify performance bonus targets

Spotify doesn't offer cash bonuses. The company offers performance-based stock refreshers, but they are not consistent. It is possible to go up to 4 years without a refresher. However, managers do try to give a new grant after 4 years so no employee runs out of equity.

Spotify's approach to remote pay

Spotify has remote roles and your Spotify remote salary is based on the country you reside in (most companies have much more granular policies than this). This means that if you live in a low cost of living area you can get a very competitive offer. However, for people in SF/NYC, the offers are well below market rates.

Also, something to keep in mind, most Spotify employees in the US work on Eastern Standard Time regardless of where they live. Sometimes a team may require new hires to move to a city for timezone reasons. However, this is very team dependent.

Spotify's relocation package

Most of the time you won't have to relocate given Spotify's Work From Anywhere policy. If you do, Spotify typically offers a relocation package which is equivalent to one month’s salary.

Most negotiable component

Spotify’s most negotiable component is base salary, which is quite unusual as equity is almost always the most negotiable component at big tech companies. As mentioned previously, it's typically not worth focusing the negotiation on a signing bonus at Spotify.

Does Spotify require written offers?

They very rarely ask for written offers. You are more likely to simply be told that Spotify can't match your competing offer. Some recruiters do ask for additional details regarding the competing offer such as location, offer breakdown, etc.

Will Spotify go above band if I have a strong competing offer?

Spotify does not usually go above band. They tend to differentiate on WLB rather than compensation. You still have other options at your disposal if you want higher compensation (e.g. up-levelling negotiations).

Is my hiring manager relationship important at Spotify?

Managers at Spotify have less control over offers (that's mostly run by a comp team). However, building good rapport with your hiring manager is always helpful in a negotiation, as they may be able to advocate on your behalf with recruiters / comp team.

What does the hiring process look like at Spotify?

The hiring process at Spotify is different for every role. The hiring process for a software engineer typically has four stages: recruiter call, team interview (LeetCode questions via CoderPad), onsite interview, and offer stage.

Does Spotify pay well compared to Apple?

Let’s consider a Spotify software engineer salary at the senior level. The total compensation at Apple for the same role/level (i.e. ICT4 software engineer) is much higher compared to Spotify.  For instance, top of band at Apple is ~$440K/year + $80K signing, whereas at the same level Spotify's top of band is ~$310K/year.

What kind of benefits does Spotify offer?

Spotify's cash and equity components should be the main focus of your negotiation. They provide pretty standard benefits such as health coverage, a retirement plan, and other miscellaneous perks like employee discounts.

Spotify Equity Vesting Schedule

Year 1
25%
Year 2
25%
Year 3
25%
Year 4
25%
Year 5
25%
Year 5
%

Spotify Levels

Spotify Level

Associate Engineer

Engineer I

Engineer II

Senior Engineer

Staff Engineer

Senior Staff Engineer

Principal Engineer

=

Equivalent Level at Google

L3

L3

Between L3 and L4

Between L4 and L5

L6

L7

Between L8 and L9

Why use us?

Our Clients Love Rora

Coming from a non-FAANG background, I was shocked to find out how much I could be earning. Before I signed up with Rora, I made the mistake of telling Amazon my current compensation. Thankfully, Rora knew exactly how to fix it and ended up getting me an offer that was 2.3X what I previously made and more than $600K higher than Amazon’s initial offer!

Through several weeks of interviews, Ganesh was always available to make sure I knew what to say for each conversation. I interviewed with start ups, Google, Facebook and Amazon and was really impressed that Rora knew the comp ranges and were able to give me tailored advice for each – even the start ups.

There ended up being two particularly complex moments in my negotiation. One of the start-ups I had a personal relationship with and I wasn’t sure how it would affect the negotiation. I like that there was a focus on my individual circumstances and that they were leveraged to get me a higher offer. The other situation is that Amazon made a mistake on my written offer and initially wouldn’t rectify it. Ganesh was able to guide me through a challenging conversation to get it resolved.

Steve Commisso
L7 Principal Software Engineer, Amazon

Thanks to Wilson and the team at Rora I got a ~$250K increase on my remote Facebook offer! I was initially worried I wouldn’t have much leverage because Facebook reached out to me, and I wasn’t interviewing anywhere else. Rora introduced me to an Amazon L7 recruiter and helped me get that process started. I didn’t even end up needing to finish the Amazon interviews, since we were able to use some early compensation conversations to justify our numbers to Facebook.

At one point I was also considering pushing for an E7 role, and they wrote up a great script for me to broach the subject with my recruiter. She ended up giving me the option to do an additional interview to be considered for the higher-level position.

The whole process was very smooth, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use the service for any future negotiations. I found the regular calls with Wilson where we walked through strategy and discussed the scripts to be extremely helpful. Not only did it help with this negotiation, but I also learned a lot of useful negotiation tactics that I’ve already started to use in other situations.

Chris Jones
E6 Software Engineer, Facebook

As an engineering leader with decades of experience and having now gone through the negotiation with the team at Rora, the only thing I can say is — get the help. Whether you realize you need it, or even if you think you don’t. Just because you have done well in engineering doesn't mean that you understand the tactics and limits of the recruiting process.

Rora helped me get a $200K increase on my original Facebook offer without any competing offers.  It was clear that Rora was deeply familiar with Facebook's negotiation playbook. I’d honestly give the experience an 11/10.

In addition, Rora guided me on how to get the position switched to a revised remote role which was a huge deal at a personal level. They showed me how to redirect FB’s questions so that I could explore the possibility of not relocating, without ever having to say no to my original offer.

E7 Hardware Engineer
Facebook

This is my first FAANG role and I'm so happy I worked with Rora (thanks again Annie!) for the negotiation. My goal was to increase my Google offer, but I was in a tricky situation where I only had 1 other interview (no offer yet) at a small startup. With their guidance, I managed to get a $240K increase on my Google offer, despite Google's policy of requiring cross offers in writing to justify an increase.

The mock negotiations were a big part of why I was able to get this increase. Going into the negotiation, I assumed the key factor was what to say but I quickly learned that how you say it is equally if not more important. This was clear when over the course of the call"no" turned into "I'll see what I can do" and eventually"I think we can make this work". A big part of this was also having someone with me on the calls to provide real time guidance. This took a lot of the stress out of the situation. I can't recommend this team highly enough!

Andrei Gorbushkin
L5 Technical Program Manager, Google

After receiving several job offers, I needed to make a decision within a few days. I wanted to make sure I was getting the best offer possible, so I decided to use Rora. I was very pleased with their service. My coach, Sameer, was well prepared and had information about what compensation increases were likely possible. He provided detailed scripts covering a range of scenarios, and he did practice negotiations with me that helped me feel confident when I had the actual conversations.  

With his help I was able to increase one offer by $45k per year plus get a $50k signing bonus and then use that to increase my offer from Square, which was my first choice. All throughout he was very responsive as I was dealing with some tight deadlines and looking to wrap things up quickly. Rora's fee was only a tiny fraction of the increase they helped me negotiate, and even though they would have made more money if I had taken the highest offer, Sameer always put my goals first and never pressured me to do so. I highly recommend Rora!

L6 Software Engineer
Square

My friend introduced me to Rora and I’m so glad they did. I initially did some calculations to see if working with them would be worth it - my final increase ended up being ~3x higher than what I had estimated to be possible!

Their data is much more accurate than anything I found online. Without Sameer's guidance, I would have never known (and would have probably been too nervous) to ask for >$800K for anAmazon L7 offer. Of course, it's not just not enough to throw out a big number, you also need to be able to justify it. Sameer guided me through negotiating an up-level at another company, which I didn’t even know was possible at my level. With their scripts, I was able to leverage my competing offer to get exec approval for my Amazon offer. They also knew all the tricks Amazon would play (e.g., assuming 15% stock appreciation) and exactly how to counter them.

My total 4-year compensation increased by $570K. I don't think I've ever had a higher ROI – I’m very thankful that this service exists!

L7 Principal Software Engineer
Amazon

Maximize your Spotify Offer

Spotify

has a unique set of negotiation policies. If you don’t have experience negotiating with them, you risk losing out on large amounts of money because of very small mistakes.

There are many of these rules you need to know to get the highest

Spotify

offer possible.

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