By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 A retained executive search runs in installments over roughly 90 to 120 days, with the firm mapping a market, approaching passive leaders directly, and delivering three to five assessed finalists instead of a stack of applicants. That timeline is two to three times longer than the published … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Selling tech debt to executives fails because the phrase names four unrelated problems at once. Split it into security exposure, delivery cost, key-person risk, and a growth ceiling, then bring the one your CFO already funds. I have watched the same request get denied and then … 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
KORE1 ranks first among fractional VP of Engineering firms in 2026, scoring 8.68 out of 10 on the Placement Authority Score. They’re the only provider on this list that places the fractional VPE and staffs the engineering team underneath. Toptal (6.10) leads for heavily vetted global talent, and TechCXO (5.80) is the strongest option for … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 AI code review works for engineering teams when a VP assigns a named human owner to every risk tier, sets a review SLA the team tracks weekly, and reserves final judgment for changes touching trust boundaries, money, or production access. That’s the entire operating model in … Read more
KORE1 ranks first among fractional CTO firms in 2026, earning an 8.66 on the Placement Authority Score through documented AI-augmented executive sourcing, a 4.7 Glassdoor rating 24% above the staffing industry average, and the only model on this list that places the fractional CTO and staffs the engineering team underneath them in a single engagement. … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Buy the vendor’s AI for the seventy percent every lender needs, document intake, underwriting signals, compliance logging, and build custom only at the one exception queue that is actually yours. Most engineering leaders pick one extreme or the other. The pattern that actually works sits in … Read more
By Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 Fintech engineering teams keep velocity through an audit by making evidence a byproduct of the pipeline, tiering changes by risk instead of reviewing everything equally, and documenting a break-glass path before they need it. Three patterns. I have shipped under all three, auditors have signed off … 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 Kris Drouet, Engineering Executive, in partnership with KORE1 A synchronous call inside an event-driven system costs you the product of every dependency’s availability, the worst tail latency anywhere in the chain, and the retry load of every client sitting above it. Three numbers. You can compute all three in an afternoon from data you … Read more
