Not all work doing that mind you is in that range, only ones where you do a lot of work very well, often in very large companies. I've seen comparable rates coming out of consulting firms doing that stuff in the area as well. I bet Scientific Atlanta (a Cisco company), Flextronics, Lockheed and other larger electronics firms have similar positions. I'm in Atlanta, but I'm betting RTP has a similar sort of thing.
You're not going to start anywhere doing general embedded work at that rate. Honestly, iPhone dev is probably the fastest to get there, but then you're still going to have to push hard. I see 90k as a super frequent base for salaried iOS dev, and lots of agencies (which are pretty small) charging $150 or so.
Additionally, I know Bank of America's quantitative division in Atlanta is constantly unable to find enough rockstar C++ programmers. Their pay range starts below that, but gets there in a couple years (and I do mean like 2, not 10). But this is for people who already are very very very good at C++ (the coding test is pretty hard). That position isn't embedded, but requires lots of C++ and finance knowledge to excel in.
I believe they do the massive simulations/calculations which generate the daily interest rates there, but am not sure so much.
Objective C feels much more pythonic in execution than C or C++ does. (I too prefer python)