Not the parent, but in my experience, working in a regulated field the pay tends to be better since the stakes are higher and there is a larger push for quality rather than "ship it". I work in the Medical Device space doing embedded work and find the compensation to be very good.
I recently made a change from a small embedded company that focused on high security applications, such as automotive and aerospace, to doing embedded development at one of the large tech companies. I was making about 200k at the first company and almost double that now.
It was difficult to find a company that compensated well. A lot of the non-tech companies that rely on embedded developers like automotive and consumer electronics companies pay shit.
The large tech companies all have need for embedded developers, for example Apple, Google, Nvidia and Amazon.
>I was making about 200k at the first company and almost double that now.
That's absolutely insane to me. In EU I make 55K (considered a great mid-senior wage in my area) and could make up to 75K for senior, if I move to an expensive city in Germany and work at a top company but that's the top end of the market. There's no amount of interviewing or job hopping that could get you further as an embedded dev IC here. Higher pay is reserved for management positions which are tough to get. Even making six figures as an embedded IC here is impossible, let alone 200k+
I consider myself a pretty solid experience embedded developer(20+ experiences continously, starting from motorola then, mostly embedded linux) but I just could not pass the leetcode(or similar) tests from FAANG. I actually passed it once at Amazon but was told I'm lack of 'leadership', strangely some of my old team members(that I was a tech leader for the team, and I also founded a startup) got the offer at the same time, I was rejected by Amazon(I was later told somehow one of their interview just dislike me no matter what, even though the rest all wanted me). Since then I lost interests in preparing leetcode to try at other big ones.
At smaller companies the compensation is not as good as I would like indeed.
That's pretty atypical, is it not? The vast majority of software engineers are not paid even close to that, and software engineers almost always get paid more than EEs, computer engineers, control engineers, embedded developers, etc.
The small company I worked at was definitely an anomaly. They treated all their employees well. I got a very good raise every year.
When I was looking for a new job last year I had a hard time finding any company that would even match my compensation. Luckily for me, large tech companies have an absurd amount of money these days are and paying absurd salaries.
I'm not the person you're asking, but I'm well compensated and I work in Cambridge, UK. Also known as "Silicon Fen". There are a lot of embedded jobs around here and they are pretty well paid. Yes you'll still do a little better if you go to London and work for Amazon (etc.) but it's competitive.
From my experience in past doing embedded, then web (and now mostly nothing), I noticed how much more accessible open web devs were. Information travelled fast, so it wouldn't surprise me if in the embedded world today still many don't know where the demand/money is.
From your answer I take it you're well compensated. From another embedded dev who is not well companensated, may I ask in what market you are in?