I think it's definitely true. Functionally, I'm a director of data engineering (with a big company, so my real title is way more generic). Usually in the initial screen, we'll talk general dollars, and my number is always out of range. For my level and the fact that I'm reasonably happy where I live now, the number is 200k + relocation (more for Bay Area, but lets not go there), and I don't think that's unreasonable for a director level who is presumably going to also develop your more junior DEs.

I don't fancy it up too much, either. I build teams that make the data move and land it clean so that your PhDs can do the smaaaht stuff with it. I can stack BI and Analytics on top, but a lot of people can do that starting from clean data - and clean data is what I do. But I do get the impression that we're viewed as janitors and plumbers - who you'd be thrilled to see at 3am when your shit(ter) broke, right?