How to reply to a job offer and negotiate the salary

An offer means the hiring process is over and you won it. Everything that made them uncertain has been resolved, they have told other candidates no, and re-opening the search costs them weeks. That asymmetry lasts until you accept, and then it is gone for a year.

Almost nobody uses it. The most common reply to an offer email is same-day acceptance, which leaves whatever the recruiter held in reserve on the table.

The first reply: buy time without cooling anything

Never negotiate in the first message, and never accept in it either. Reply within a few hours with genuine enthusiasm and a specific date by which you will answer. Enthusiasm is what makes the delay read as diligence rather than doubt.

That last line does a lot of work. It means the negotiation is expected rather than sprung on them, and it gives the recruiter time to go and ask for room before you name a number.

The ask itself

One number, stated plainly, with a reason that points at the market or at the scope of the job — never at your personal expenses. Rent going up is not an argument a hiring manager can take to finance. What someone with your skills costs to replace is.

• Name a specific figure, not a range. In a range, they will hear the bottom.
• Ask for meaningfully more than you'd accept, but stay inside the market — a wild number ends the conversation instead of moving it.
• Give exactly one justification. Stacking three weakens all of them.
• Say what happens if they agree. "If you can do X, I'll sign today" is the single most effective sentence in the exchange.
• Never mention a competing offer you don't have. It gets checked more often than people expect.

When they say the base is fixed

Sometimes it genuinely is — banded companies really cannot move it without re-levelling the role. Treat that as true and move to everything that isn't the base, because those budgets are usually held by different people and are far less rigid.

• A signing bonus, which comes out of a separate pot in most companies.
• An earlier review date — six months instead of twelve, with the criteria written into the offer.
• Job title, which costs nothing today and compounds for the rest of your career.
• Extra leave, a remote-days guarantee, or a fixed start date after a break you need.
• A learning or equipment budget, the easiest thing on this list for a manager to approve alone.

Get whatever you agree into the written offer before you sign. A verbal promise about a six-month review does not survive the manager leaving, and managers leave.

Accepting

Once you have decided, accept cleanly and quickly. Do not re-open anything, do not add a late condition, and confirm the details in writing so both sides have the same document.

Declining an offer you've decided against

Be quick, be clear, and do not explain in detail. "I've accepted another role" is enough — a full comparison invites a counter-offer you will then have to decline a second time, and it can sour a relationship you may need later.