Cybersecurity hiring guides, InfoSec talent market analysis, security engineer salary benchmarks, and strategies for building cybersecurity teams that protect against evolving threats in cloud, network, and application security.
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 In 2026 a SOC analyst’s base salary runs from about $58,000 for a new Tier 1 hire to roughly $145,000 for an experienced Tier 3, with most Tier 2 investigators paid $80,000 to $110,000. The $129,180 figure most salary pages quote is the federal median for every … Read more
By Robert Ardell, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, KORE1 The penetration tester interview questions that predict the hire put a live target in front of the candidate, ask who authorized their last test, and make them explain one finding in writing. Certifications and clean trivia answers tell you almost nothing. A candidate can recite the five … Read more
A Splunk Engineer job description has to answer one question before any bullet points get written. Does this person own the platform, or do they just search it? Those are two different jobs with two different salary bands, and most postings blur them into one req, which is why so many Splunk searches stall at … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Splunk engineer interviews in 2026 should test licensing judgment, data onboarding decisions, and how a candidate diagnoses a broken search, not SPL syntax anyone can memorize from a certification guide. The title gets used for three different jobs, and most interview loops only screen for one of … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 Hiring a Splunk engineer means picking one of three different jobs first, security engineer, observability engineer, or platform admin, because pay bands swing from roughly $99,000 to $153,000 depending on which one you actually post. That’s before certifications, before SPL fluency, before any of it. Get the … Read more
By Jennifer Burdick, Recruiting Manager, KORE1 Splunk engineers earn $99,000 to $209,000 in 2026, with SIEM-focused Splunk Security Engineers averaging $152,773 and general infrastructure-facing roles closer to $147,524. The title on the req decides which number you’re budgeting for, and a lot of companies pick the wrong one before the posting ever goes live. A … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 SOC 2 compliance changes four things for engineering teams day to day: every production change needs a documented approval trail, access reviews become a recurring calendar item, logging can’t get switched off to chase a bug, and someone owns evidence collection as a real job. That’s … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Bring in contract cybersecurity talent when the work is a burst your team cannot absorb or has never done before, and hire full time when someone has to own the outcome permanently. That sounds close to the test you already run on every other technical role. It … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President & Senior Partner, KORE1 CISO interview questions in 2026 should test disclosure judgment, spending under a flat budget, third-party exposure, and one incident the candidate read wrong. Strategy questions no longer separate anybody. Every finalist has that answer polished. Look at the published question lists and you find the same six … Read more
By Jennifer Burdick, Recruiting Manager, KORE1 A cloud security engineer job description should state who owns the fix, not just who finds the problem. That one line decides your candidate pool, your pay band, and whether the req closes in six weeks or six months. Fourteen years recruiting, thirteen of them at KORE1, and cloud … Read more
