Gregg Flecke
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at KORE1 When you’re not technical, you hire engineers by borrowing the judgment you don’t have, through a paid work-sample test, a trusted engineer sitting in on your interviews, and reference checks that dig into what the person actually shipped. You will not learn to read code in … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at KORE1 Hiring a controller in 2026 means budgeting roughly $120,000 to $210,000, planning a six-to-ten-week search, and deciding first whether the seat calls for a hands-on close manager or a strategic finance leader. The pay band is not the hard part. Neither is finding résumés. What kills … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 The machine learning engineer career path runs from junior to principal over roughly a decade, starting near $110,000 base and passing $250,000 by senior, before it splits into a hands-on technical track and a people-management track. What sets it apart from the AI engineer job next door … Read more
How Long Does It Take to Hire a Software Engineer in 2026? Hiring a software engineer in 2026 runs about 6 to 11 weeks when a company searches on its own, and 3 to 6 weeks with a specialized agency, with seniority, stack, and the system-design round driving the spread. Junior and generalist roles move … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 In 2026, U.S. Java developers earn a median base near $130,000, with most offers between $95,000 and $175,000, and senior engineers on trading floors or high-scale backends clearing $230,000 and up in total pay. That is a huge spread for one job title, and most of it … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 A U.S. cloud architect earns $150,000 to $235,000 in base pay in 2026, with senior and multi-cloud specialists clearing $250,000 and total comp at big-tech employers running well past $400,000. That is a wide band, and the thing that moves it most is not on the resume … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 A software engineer builds the applications your customers use, while a data engineer builds the pipelines and warehouse that turn raw data into something your analysts and models can trust. Both ship production code. Both call themselves engineers. But they own different systems, answer to different definitions … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 An AI research scientist in 2026 runs $160,000 to $250,000 base for most companies, with frontier-lab total packages past $600,000, and the first question is whether you need a true researcher or an applied scientist wearing the title. That gap is the whole ballgame. Get it wrong … Read more
A cloud architect designs and governs an organization’s cloud environment across AWS, Azure, or GCP, owning the migration strategy, security guardrails, and cost model that engineering teams build within, and earns $130,000 to $205,000 base in the U.S. in 2026. That is a design-and-governance job, not a build-and-operate one, and the gap between those two … Read more
By Gregg Flecke, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner, KORE1 A generative AI engineer in the U.S. earns roughly $105,000 to $255,000 in base pay in 2026, with lead, multimodal, and model-training specialists clearing $300,000 base and total comp at frontier labs running well past $600,000. That spread is wide on purpose. One title is doing the … Read more
