Tom Kenaley
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 NetSuite administrators in the U.S. make a median base of about $111,000 in 2026. The middle of the market runs roughly $85,000 to $140,000, and a certified admin holding together a multi-subsidiary OneWorld instance clears $150,000 without much argument. That median hides something specific, though, and it … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 In 2026, U.S. Workday consultants earn a median base near $115,000, with most offers landing between $95,000 and $165,000, and senior functional and integration specialists who have carried a live deployment clearing $175,000 and up. One title, several jobs that barely resemble each other. The module bends … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 A group product manager runs a small team of PMs while still owning strategy for a product area, and costs $190,000 to $285,000 base in 2026, or $310,000 to $560,000 all in at public tech firms. That double duty is the whole job, and it is also … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President & Senior Partner, KORE1 The Workday consultant interview questions that predict a strong hire in 2026 test configuration judgment under pressure, not memorized terminology. Hand a candidate a business process that routes to the wrong approver and watch them reason toward the fix. Ask why an integration failed overnight with payroll … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 In 2026, U.S. penetration testers earn a median base near $130,000, with most offers landing between $95,000 and $180,000, and senior red-team operators who can prove real exploitation clearing $200,000 in total pay. One job title, and hiding under it a pay range that would make your … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 In 2026, U.S. Kubernetes engineers earn a median base near $140,000, with most offers landing between $115,000 and $195,000, and senior platform specialists who run production clusters clearing $230,000 and up in total pay. One title, and underneath it a pay gap wide enough to drive a … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President & Senior Partner, KORE1 Build a data team in hiring order: start with one analyst or analytics engineer to make your existing data usable, add a data engineer when pipelines break, and hire a data scientist only after you have clean data. A dedicated data leader comes around four to six … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President & Senior Partner, KORE1 The AI engineer career path climbs from junior at zero to two years ($110,000 to $145,000 base) through mid and senior, then splits into a staff or principal track and an engineering-management track, with senior base pay reaching $290,000. What sets it apart from the machine learning … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 Hiring a Salesforce architect in 2026 means paying $150,000 to $260,000 for a senior, deciding first whether you need a technical or a functional architect, and screening hard for the discipline to tell the platform no. A focused search closes in three to six weeks. Most drag … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 A data scientist finds what your data can tell you. An ML engineer makes that finding run in production at scale. One hands back insight and a prototype model, the other ships a system that stays accurate under real traffic. Both write Python. Same language, sure. Only … Read more
