Mike Carter
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 As of October 16, 2026, a mid-level contract Salesforce consultant bills $75 to $95 an hour nationally (median $84), about $43,700 for three months. Senior architect-level work bills $95 to $115, median $106. KORE1’s own ERP, NetSuite and Salesforce consultant placements bill a median $91 (n=15, multi-state). Every rate … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 As of October 2026, a mid-level cloud or DevOps engineer on a W2 contract bills about $95 to $120 per hour nationally (median $106), or roughly $55,300 for a 3-month, 40-hour-a-week contract. Seattle runs higher at a $132 median, and Dallas-Fort Worth sits just above national at $109. Every … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 One Level 2 contract help desk technician costs about $8,500 a month at the national median in 2026, and two Level 1 seats plus a Level 2 lead run about $21,800 a month. Both figures come from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026, billed at … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 A sales engineer job description should state how many account executives the seat supports, the typical deal size and cycle, who owns the demos and proofs of concept, how variable pay is earned, and who the role reports to. Most postings stop at “partner with sales.” Good sales engineers … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 Good product designer interview questions for 2026 ask a candidate to find the funnel step worth redesigning, read an A/B test honestly, and design for an AI feature that is sometimes wrong. Portfolio polish tells you about taste. These questions tell you whether the person will move a number. … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 Microsoft Maia 300 is Microsoft’s third in-house AI inference chip, due in production in 2027, and it pits Microsoft against Google, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI for the same small pool of custom-silicon engineers. Microsoft unveiled it on October 12, 2026. The design is done. The fight for the people … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 Strong mechanical engineer interview questions in 2026 have a candidate work a number by hand, read a part that already failed, and defend a material or tolerance call under cost pressure. Definitions of stress, strain, and Young’s modulus tell you who passed Statics. They don’t tell you who you’d … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 Good group product manager interview questions test two jobs at once, owning a product surface and growing the two to four PMs who report in, and they make the candidate show how one 45-hour week holds both. Most published lists skip the second job. They ask senior PM questions … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 DHS has proposed charging schools $70,000 the first time they recommend an F-1 student for Optional Practical Training, plus $30,000 for each later recommendation. Nothing is in effect. Comments close November 9, 2026. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth reading twice, because almost every headline about … Read more
By Mike Carter, Managing Director, KORE1 Decommissioning legacy systems means fully retiring an old platform after a migration, archiving its data under the retention rules that apply to it, cutting off every downstream consumer, and reclaiming the licenses, hardware, and access it still holds. Most migrations never finish that part. The new system goes live, … Read more
