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Sarah Chen

Head of Career Research

12 years of industry experience

About Sarah

Sarah Chen spent eight years inside technical recruiting at Meta and Amazon, screening over 12,000 engineering and product candidates and partnering with hiring managers across more than forty teams. After leaving FAANG in 2022, she founded the Career Intelligence Lab and now leads editorial research at WikiCounsellor, where she translates inside-the-room hiring knowledge into open guides for everyone. Sarah holds an M.S. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from NYU and is a frequent guest on The Career Report podcast. She fact-checks every salary methodology change and personally reviews all roadmap updates before publication.

Articles by Sarah

Salary & Compensation

How to Negotiate a Tech Salary in 2026: An 8-Step Playbook from a Former FAANG Recruiter

Most candidates lose between $8,000 and $35,000 of total compensation in a single conversation they barely realise is happening. Here is how to stop doing that.

Published April 12, 2026 14 min read

Career Strategy

The Data Analyst Roadmap in 2026: A 12-Month Plan for Career-Switchers

Most data analyst career-switch guides assume you can quit your job and pay for a bootcamp. This one does not. It is built for people working full-time in something else, who want a realistic path and a portfolio that gets first-round interviews.

Published February 18, 2026 13 min read