What a Specialist MedTech Recruiter Knows About Salary That You Do Not

What You Will Learn in This Post

• Why the salary figure you are working from is almost certainly the wrong one for your next role move.

• The exact questions to ask a specialist recruiter so you find the top of the band before you name a number.

• How to judge an offer on the whole package instead of the base salary alone.

• The salary mistakes that cost MedTech candidates the most, and how to avoid every one of them.

You have read the salary guides. You have scanned a few adverts. You have landed on a number that feels about right for your next role move. That number is usually a guess wearing the clothes of research.

I place people in MedTech every week. I see what employers budget, what they sign off in the end, and how far apart those two figures sit.

That gap is information, and right now it belongs to the employer. This post is about how you get hold of it and put it to work in your own favour.

Why My View of Salary Differs From Yours

You change roles every few years. I watch offers land every week. You see the advertised figure. I see the counteroffer, the stretch budget, and the reason the last candidate was turned down over £3,000.

That is not cleverness on my part. It's experience.

Anyone sitting between employers and candidates all day builds a picture that no published survey can match.

The point of this post is not to impress you with what I know. It is to show you how to pull that knowledge out of me, or any specialist MedTech recruiter you work with.

The Number You Are Working From Is Not Your Number

Published averages blend every employer, every region, and every level of skill into one figure. They are useful to economists and unfortunately close to useless when you are pricing your own move.

Office for National Statistics earnings data puts the median full-time UK salary at around £39,000, with average weekly earnings growth settling near 3% for 2026.

This number tells you what a role with your experience could be worth. Two people can share a job title and sit in completely different pay markets.

What sets your rate is the value you create, the scarcity of your skill set, and how urgently this employer needs the problem solved. A salary site cannot see any of that.

What to Do About It

Stop benchmarking yourself against a national figure. Ask a recruiter who works your niche what they have closed in the last ninety days for someone at your level. That is your benchmark.

How to Talk Money With a Recruiter Without Being Priced Low

Candidates hold back their salary expectation because they fear being underpaid and undervalued. We understand the instinct.

In practice, it works against you far more often than it protects you.

We are judged on placements that last. Someone who joins underpaid resigns within a year, and that failure lands on us.

The mistake is not sharing your number. The mistake is sharing it before you have asked for the information that lets you set it well. So ask first.

Four Questions Worth Asking Before You Name a Figure

• "What is the full band for this role, and what does the top of it look like?"

• "What kind of profile usually gets offered the top of that band?"

• "What have you closed recently for a similar role in my location?"

• "Where has this employer stretched before, and where do their offers usually stop?"

A specialist recruiter will answer all four, because none of it damages the placement. If someone will not answer, that tells you something about who they are working for.

Then give your number and anchor it in the market rather than in your outgoings.

"Based on what you have told me, I am looking at X" is a stronger position than "I need X."

The Stretch Figure Nobody Advertises

Most employers brief us with two numbers. There is the range they expect to pay. There is also a figure they will stretch to if someone arrives who ticks every box.

The second number is released late, once the employer can compare you with everyone else they have met and recognise what it would cost to lose you to a competitor.

There are limits. Pay compression is real. Hiring you well above loyal team members creates a problem the manager then has to live with, and internal bands narrow the room further.

Your job is to give us a reason to argue. Bring evidence of what you have delivered, in numbers where you can. We can push a band with proof. We cannot push it with hope.

Negotiate the Package, Not the Base

Base salary is the figure you repeat to friends. It is rarely the figure that decides how well off you are twelve months later.

Consider two offers. One carries a higher base, fifty-hour weeks, and steep healthcare costs. The other pays less, protects your hours, and covers more. The second often leaves you better off.

Bonus, commission, pension contributions, shift and on-call payments, equity, and holiday all carry real money. Ask your recruiter to price the whole offer, not just the headline.

Where the base will not move, the package often will. Sign-on payments, an early review date, extra holiday, and study support are usually easier to sign off than a band breach.

How to Use Pay Transparency in Your Favour

The UK has no blanket requirement to publish salary ranges in adverts, although government guidance is pressing employers towards greater openness.

A published range only helps you if you know how honest it is. Ask your MedTech recruiter where in that range candidates like you have landed recently, and why.

The Salary Mistakes That Cost Candidates Most

• Treating an advertised range as fixed. The stretch figure exists, and it is decided at the end of the process, not the start.

• Naming a number based on your bills rather than the market. It invites a debate you cannot win with evidence.

• Judging an offer on base salary alone and discovering the true cost of the role in month three.

• Refusing to discuss pay at all until the final stage, then losing weeks to a process that was never going to reach your figure.

• Accepting the first offer because it beats your current salary, without asking what the market pays someone with your profile.

Every one of these is avoidable with a single conversation before you start applying. That conversation costs you nothing and routinely changes the number at the end.

Where This Leaves You

Moving remains the fastest route to a step change in pay. Staying still tends to mean standing still.

In the UK, analysis of 2026 pay awards shows most employers clustering around 3%, so an internal rise is unlikely to match what a well-judged move delivers.

A move made badly, though, costs you two years. The difference is almost always the advice you took before you started, and how early you took it.

You do not need to become a salary expert. You need someone in your corner who already is.

Take a look at the MedTech roles we are working on right now to see where this market sits today.

Send us your CV, tell us what you want to earn, and we will tell you honestly whether the market agrees. If it does not, we will tell you exactly what would change that.