A salary band is not a single number — it is a distribution, and the four points we publish (p25, p50, p75, p90) tell you exactly where an offer sits relative to the market. Most people only ever hear "the average," which hides the spread that actually decides whether you are being lowballed. This guide explains what each percentile means, using the Senior Software Engineer tier-1 band (n = 1,404 postings) as the worked example, and shows you how to turn those four numbers into a negotiating position.
The four numbers, in plain English
| Percentile | Meaning | If your offer is here… |
|---|---|---|
| p25 | 25% of postings pay less, 75% pay more | Below market — push back |
| p50 (median) | The middle: half above, half below | Fair, typical offer |
| p75 | Only 25% of postings pay more | Strong — well-positioned |
| p90 | Top 10% of the market | Excellent — top-tier |
Worked example: Senior SWE, tier-1 (n = 1,404)
Suppose this band reads as below (figures here are illustrative round numbers for explanation, not the live read — check the live band for current values):
| Point | Illustrative value (LPA) | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| p25 | ₹ 28 | Low end of the senior market |
| p50 | ₹ 38 | The typical senior offer |
| p75 | ₹ 50 | Strong senior offer |
| p90 | ₹ 64 | Top-decile senior offer |
The gap between p25 and p90 is the whole story. If someone offers you the p25 number and calls it "competitive," you now know that three-quarters of the market pays more. If you are offered the p75 figure, you are genuinely well-placed and the room to negotiate is smaller.
Why the average lies
Salary distributions are right-skewed: a handful of very high offers drag the mean above the median. That is why we never lead with "average" — the median (p50) is the honest centre, and the p25/p90 spread tells you how much the role varies by company, scope and your own leverage.
Turning percentiles into a negotiation
- Find your band's p50 and p75 before the first conversation.
- Anchor your ask near p75 if your experience is strong — it is defensible because a quarter of the market already pays it.
- If the offer lands below p50, ask what would move it up; you have data showing it is below typical.
- Treat p90 as a stretch, not an entitlement — reserve it for genuinely top-tier scope.
A note on sample size
Percentiles are only meaningful with enough data. We suppress any band with fewer than n = 12 postings, so when you see a band, the spread is real. The Senior SWE tier-1 band's 1,404 postings make its percentiles about as reliable as market data gets.
Look up your own band on the salary bands explorer, see which roles hold their value in the most defensible tech jobs in India, and stop wasting applications by reading the cluster-aware way to job-hunt. Questions on the numbers: [email protected].
Methodology & data sources
Figures in this piece are computed from Tevos Labs' job-market corpus — a continuously-crawled, deduplicated index of India tech postings. Aggregates were read on 2026-05-28 from the following tables:
salary_bands— Senior SWE tier-1 percentile aggregates (n = 1,404)rich_job_enrich— role, seniority and city normalisation feeding the band
Salary distributions are computed only where a band has a sample size of n ≥ 12 postings; smaller cells are suppressed. Percentiles (p25/p50/p75/p90) are empirical order statistics over observed advertised ranges, not modelled estimates. Numbers marked "illustrative" are worked examples for explanation, not corpus reads. Questions on method: [email protected].