$700K+ at FAANG with an internal offer: why he searched anyway

This client was making $700K+ at a FAANG firm, had an internal offer and still decided to run an external job search.

He had been operating at L7, working on some of the most interesting AI/ML problems he had encountered in his career.

Then, his org was impacted by a restructuring, and the role he moved into was an L6 position based in Georgia. He lived in New York, so he started flying back and forth almost every week, and it became exhausting quickly.

Happy to stay, unless there was a great opportunity

The interesting part was that he wasn't stuck. G***** had already offered him an internal move back to New York. He could have taken it, continued earning around $700K+, and carried on.

So when he spoke to us, his position was pretty simple:

“I'm happy at G***** unless there is a great opportunity.”

He wanted to get back to L7 or higher, work on genuinely cutting-edge AI problems, and find a company he would be excited to join. He mentioned companies like Anthropic, Salesforce and ServiceNow.

He knew how to interview, but he just wanted someone to take care of everything that happened before the interview.

He remembered spending huge amounts of time applying to jobs, finding the right people, sending messages, following up and trying to manage the whole process himself. By the time interviews arrived, he had already burned a lot of his available time on the search.

Personalized outreach that impressed a Head of HR

So while he focused on his actual job and interview preparation, our team worked through the market, identified relevant roles, found the people responsible for them, and reached out directly.

That last part ended up making a bigger impression than he expected.

At one company, the Head of HR specifically told him that the personalized outreach from our team had impressed them.

45 interviews and two offers

Meanwhile, the interview pipeline kept growing: DoorDash, Uber, GEICO, Stripe, Pinterest, Citi, and several others.

By the end of the search, he had landed 45 interviews and had two Engineering Manager offers in hand.

One came with a $310K base and equity that was worth $800K+ at the time, putting the opportunity at well over $1M in potential compensation.

Speaking about the experience, he told us:

“You had one side fully covered for me. I didn't even worry.”

He didn't have to spend his evenings figuring out which jobs to apply to, who to contact, or how to get in front of the right people. Those hours went toward preparing for the opportunities our team was creating.

For a senior engineering leader who already has a strong career, the hardest part is finding the time and energy to run the search properly while you're already doing a demanding job.

That's where having someone run the process for you can change the experience completely. We at Wolf Mentoring do exactly that.