Does anyone have any tips or strategies to negotiate an offer to be at a higher level / position grade?
Get an offer from somewhere else
Depends on the company. Here, level isn’t negotiable, so if you find out the level being offered and want a higher one, you’d need at least 1-2 more interviews followed by another round of review at hiring committee + SVP. I think this is likely similar at FB and AMZN, not sure about MSFT, and as far as I know Netflix doesn’t have levels.
Within the company? Or outside? If it's for a new job, just lie about being at a higher level now. Just gotta be sure that you're capable of performing at that level. When they check your past employment, the only thing HR provides is your start and end dates, no one gives out your title. This has been my experience, there are folks with better insight on here, I'm sure.
Currently outside of the company, and did not know that about HR providing only dates
Yup. As long as you can handle the role then they don’t care too much. Some places will normally try to adjust your salary based on previous salary. So that is where I’m normally a little more cautious. Otherwise just describing situation where you performed at those higher levels is what I used. Will be going up 2ish titles in my future move to AMZ.