This is an assumption from what would be logical or real life hiring experience? I would agree with the logical foundation, but none of the big data & ml people I know work at a car company.

As I said I only remember Zalando being active on the hiring front, and they don't do cars (yet).

Magic word is "connected services" if you want to earn big bucks in automotive working on ML/Big Data. It's a real life experience, basically in the past year all big German car manufacturers are hiring like crazy in these fields.

Maybe in the US. In germany that's a senior manager salary. Independent of how good you are as a SW developer (or data scientist, ...) you will always get a normal engineer ("Sachbearbeiter") salary, which is pretty much regulated through IG Metall. And that maxes out at about 100k€ (which you will have more chances to get when you are decades of years in the company than when you are new but have a great knowledge). Source: Have worked long enough for one of those companies. And always wished salaries would have been more skill/talent based.

C'mon, I would appreciate comments or discussions, ideally about real life (personal) experiences instead of downvotes. What I tried to give here was also only my personal experience (and what I know from lots of friends also working in the industry).

I think the trick was to be hired outside unionized jobs - those had some cut off (I don't remember exactly, like 130k-140k/year), basically like the whole higher management is.