At any company worth working for, security engineers tend to be paid more than software engineering roles, because security engineers are in higher demand. If the company is paying less for a security engineer, they're going to get folks with little to no experience.

Not aligned with my personal experience as a security engineer. The most senior roles I see out there top out at 200k-250k in total comp with some exceptions.

In the bay area, or where? That's unusually low total comp for a senior security engineer (I wouldn't accept a role that offered less than $500k total comp in the bay area, for a staff level).

It depends on the industry. Finance is usually one of the exceptions.

Yes, best way to get crazy comp without passing a Google interview is security with “engineer” in your JD and especially cloud familiarity. Average dev at the average company is probably earning less and less lifetime potential than the average security engineer.