How do I negotiate an offered low salary for a high position?

Question

TLDR: Promoted from intern to junior lead/management type of position. Offer by the company doesn't match the average salary in the market, how can I negotiate my position?

I've been working for 1 year and 6 months in total, and for 10 months in the same start-up. I joined as a junior full stack developer intern and did multiple type of tasks that have not been in my official responsibilities, for example:

• Full development of new features and new products
• Taking care of the company's codebase and deployment
• Solving issues on the company's products or customer requests
• Teaching/mentoring new developers (2 new employees) on the company's technology and solving their questions and issues.

I've worked overtime as well, but not paid hours. I felt overworked, but I saw this as an opportunity to develop my soft and hard skills, and make up for my lack of experience in the employment world. I imagined the company would know the value of my work and offer me a good position after my internship. During the whole year, I didn't receive any kind of performance review, until a few days ago... I got offered a "junior lead developer" position, where my official responsabilities will be:

• Same as above but in an official way, meeting the company's KPI's
• Review the other employee's tasks and manage them
• Connect the business-related employees and product owner with the development team
• Organize each project's development process with the development team
• Make sure that the goals are reached by performing the above tasks

The position is good, and I like it, but the salary offered is just +600€ on my net monthly salary. During the interview I received a lot of positive feedback, and I was happy about it, but the company said that the average salary for someone like me in the market (European city) is the offered.

After doing my own research, the average salary of that position in this city is much more than the offered by the company. I used popular sites like Glassdoor and based it on my experience.

I still didn't receive the official offer/contract, so I want to negotiate it. How can I approach management in this case of situation and what course of action should I avoid?

EDIT: I actually want to point out that they offered me a "junior lead developer" role. This role does not exist in the market, and I've thought about it like a way they have to tell me "you're good to be a lead but not good enough, so you're going to be a junior lead developer".

Answer 1

After only 1 1/2 years, it's very unusual to be a "lead developer". Maybe they only have a very small or inexperienced team. Given that, expecting to get the average salary for a lead developer in your area may be wishful thinking. You're comparing yourself with people who may have 10 or more years experience.

Answer 2

"How do I negotiate a salary"

"Thanks for the offer. I was looking for a salary of €abc,000 for that role. What do you think?"

1. Be extremely brief. Indeed copy and paste the above, translate if necesssary

2. State the exact, specific, figure you want, to the centime. Do NOT mention in any way ever, at all, ever bands, ranges, ballparks, outlines, goals. State the exact euro amount in writing.

3. Never, ever, ever give a "reason" you want the salary you state. (It is utterly pointless. They can instantly demolish any reason you give in two words.)

If they come back with "arguments", or indeed they reply in any way whatsoever other than giving you the salary you stated, just reply

"Hmm. I was looking for a salary of €abc,000 for that role."

To repeat, it is utterly pointless getting in to an "argument"; they can instantly demolish any reason you give in two words.

If you don't get exactly what you want, walk away and get another job.