Tom Kenaley
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President at KORE1 A good contract-to-hire conversion rate falls between 10% and 20% of a company’s total contract workforce converting to full-time roles each year, based on employer-side industry benchmarks, well below the 60%-plus figures often quoted online. That gap is not a typo. It is a definitions problem, … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 A scrum master career path moves from entry-level facilitator to senior scrum master in two to four years, then splits into agile coach, release train engineer, or product owner, each capable of $150K or more within five to seven years. That’s the version nobody selling a certification weekend … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President at KORE1 Cloud security engineers earn $105,000 to $215,000 base in 2026, from associate to senior, with staff and principal roles running $215,000 to $300,000 and past it at large technology employers. Total compensation lands higher once bonus and equity enter. The spread between two people holding the … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 A NetSuite administrator configures the system you already own, and a NetSuite developer writes the code for what configuration can’t reach, so most hiring managers who think they need a developer actually need an administrator first. Plenty of companies genuinely need a developer they haven’t hired yet, so … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 AWS solutions architect interview questions in 2026 map to the four domains AWS uses to grade the SAA-C03 exam: security, resilience, performance, and cost, and the best hires can defend a real trade-off in each one. A certification proves someone studied. It does not prove they can design … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President at KORE1 Hiring a NetSuite consultant in 2026 costs $85 to $250 an hour for most US engagements. Offshore resources bill $30 to $75, independents $85 to $150, staffing-firm contractors $90 to $185, boutique partners $150 to $250, and Big 4 teams more. The spread is not noise. … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President at KORE1 VP of Finance salaries run $195,000 to $280,000 base in 2026 at most private companies, with PE-backed and pre-IPO seats reaching $300,000 and public-company divisional VPs clearing $340,000. The band is wide because the job is. Two people with the same title, the same team size, … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 Hiring an SAP S/4HANA consultant starts with naming your conversion path and your workstream, because brownfield and greenfield reward opposite skill sets. Mid-to-senior consultants run $110,000 to $195,000 base in 2026, contract rates sit between $110 and $200 an hour, and a scoped search closes in two to … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 Five different jobs hide inside the title IAM engineer, and the search only moves fast when you name which one you mean before the req goes live. Mid-to-senior identity talent runs $115,000 to $200,000 base in 2026, and a scoped search closes in three to six weeks. An … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 An ETL developer builds and maintains the pipelines that move data between systems, and in 2026 most U.S. hires land between $103,000 and $185,000 depending on whether the job is running a modern stack or escaping a legacy one. That second clause is doing almost all the work … Read more
