Tom Kenaley
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 A Chief Revenue Officer costs $313,000 to $374,000 in base salary across the middle of the U.S. market, on-target earnings usually land near double the base, and most searches run 8 to 14 weeks. None of that is the decision that determines whether the hire works. That … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 Embedded systems engineer pay in 2026 lands between $91,000 and $161,000 across the major salary sources. Change the question to who employs them and the same title spans $106,000 to $331,000. That second spread decides whether your search closes. On a single afternoon in August 2026 I … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 Hiring a Sage Intacct consultant in 2026 costs $75 to $135 an hour on contract, or $110,000 to $170,000 base for a direct hire. Settle whether you’re buying a partner firm or a person for a seat before you write a word of the req. Those are … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 AWS solutions architects average $145,725 to $176,595 in 2026 depending on which aggregator you trust, while architects employed by AWS itself clear a $262,000 median in total compensation. Both figures are accurate. They describe two different jobs wearing the same title. Last spring I had two AWS … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 The generative AI engineer career path runs from associate to staff in roughly six to ten years, but the level you hold is set by what you can prove works, not by years served. Base pay spans $105,000 at entry to $330,000 and up at principal. The … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 ERP projects fail because the seats that matter go unfilled, not because the software is wrong. Six staffing gaps cause most of it, and every one of them is visible before kickoff if you know where to look. Somebody usually invites me to the post-mortem. The slide … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 Hiring a C-suite executive in 2026 starts by naming which seat you need and what it owns, budgeting $250,000 to $900,000 in total pay depending on the role, then giving the search 90 to 150 days. Most companies get the last part right and the first part … Read more
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
