We've negotiated many Capital One offers. Don't leave $100K+ on the table.
Capital One is willing to negotiate but they don’t pay as well as most tech companies. They also have a tendency to low ball and hence you should always negotiate to make sure you’re getting the market value.
- Base Salary
- Equity Package (see the Capital One vesting schedule below and only for some senior levels)
- Performance Bonus (varies by levels)
- Capital One Sign on Bonus (not included in all initial offers)
- Capital One Stock Refreshers (only for senior levels)
When Capital One gives you an offer, they usually give a range for the expected bonus depending on the level. The final number depends on your and company performance. You should also keep in mind that not everyone gets this bonus.
Capital One allows remote work but there are very few remote positions. From September 6, the company wants to follow a hybrid system and they want teams determine what works for them.
As for remote pay, comp at Capital One is discounted on the basis of location. So, someone in California will earn more than someone in Virginia.
Capital One provides relocation assistance if you are required to move. In this situation, you should push for a $10k+ relocation bonus.
The most negotiable component at Capital One is the base salary. This is very uncommon as, at most tech companies, base salary is the least negotiable component. Sign on would be the next most negotiable component if it’s offered. Capital One doesn’t like to offer sign on too often especially for lower levels. The least negotiable component is equity.
For more information on how to negotiate, look at our articles on email negotiation strategies, how to prepare a script for salary negotiation, and negotiating start up equity and stock options.
Capital One usually does not require written offers, but they may ask for some high-level details about the cross offers.
This is very unlikely at Capital One in our experience. Most of the time, they are unable to match but a competing offer can still increase your total comp.
It is always important to have a good relationship with your hiring manager but your hiring manager at Capital One will not have as much say over comp.
Capital One's hiring process typically has 5 stages: recruiter call, tech screen, onsite (super day), team matching and offer stage.
For more information on which interview resource is the best for you, check out LeetCode Premium vs AlgoExpert vs InterviewCake vs HackerRank, a comprehensive guide to the most popular prep resources.
Intuit pays a little bit better than Capital One as it offers equity at the software engineer 2 level. At Capital One, a top of the band base would be $170k/year and at Intuit it would be about $155k/year. However, Intuit also offers equity and top of band would be $40k/year and their annual bonus is pretty much guaranteed which is 10% of the base salary.
While Capital One’s signing bonus, base pay, and stock grants should be the focus of your negotiation, there are other perks that are offered by the company. They provide health insurance (including dental), paid time off (vacation, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave), retirement plans (401k, FSA, ESPP) and other perks like employee discount.
Associate SWE
Senior Associate
Principal Associate
Master SWE
Lead SWE
Distinguished Eng
Senior Distinguished
Fellow
Equivalent Level at Google
L3
Between L3 and L4
L4
L5
L6
L7
L8
L9
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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!
Capital One
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
Capital One
offer possible