DC area. SF Bay of course. Atlanta/Birmingham and Austin are both markets I've heard of.

All of the above for fields -- I know web devs making well over 100k. The more specialized you go the higher you go salary wise.

Lots of companies. Defense / gov is huge in DC area.

Can't speak to out of the US, it seems that salaries are significantly lower.

I think the 200k+ salaries are probably limited to very senior engineers in regular companies, or people in the FAANG companies -- note that those companies are not exclusively in the SF Bay area.

Rule of Thumb #1 : The closer you are to affecting the marginal profitability of the company, the more you make.

e.g. Updating actuarial tables on a 20 yr old insurance system = low pay. Using ML/AI to re-build the actuarial tables into more profitable products that someone else loads = high pay.

At some point it changes into "The closer you are to the money, the more you make". The pattern since the 80's is, folks who can write checks for the company, write them for each other.

Understand the business goals. Understand the _customer's_ goals.

Bring better ideas to the table on how to achieve them using your understanding of what is the ideal mix of easy/hard and long-term/short-term.

Track your efforts against the bottom line financials. Earn the raise you seek.