Hardware companies simply don't pay as much as software companies in industry. I don't fully understand the reasons, because hardware is often more difficult to deal with than software.
That said, I have found that there has been a rash of companies / recruiters reaching out to relatively senior people making offers that wouldn't have been acceptable a decade ago, much less in 2023. I recently had one reach out to me (I'm in Colorado, so they're legally obligated to provide a salary range) about a job that required a very specialized skillset at a senior level that I happen to have (although it's nothing to do with what I do /now/), and the top of the salary range was $20k/yr less than what I was making doing that same work in 2014, almost a decade ago and more than $100k/yr less than I make now. There's a HUGE disconnect between management at most companies, especially in HR roles, and the actual market for specialized technical labor. At least in the US, I attribute this to HR roles treating Department of Labor stats like the gospel, when job categories in DoL aren't modernized and therefore cover such a broad range of subjobs that they are diluted and meaningless, while at the same time average salary is heavily skewed by the fact that largest employer in the US across almost all job categories is the federal government, which has a notoriously low payscale for skilled labor (which attracts exactly the sort of toads on a log you'd expect).
I am not currently in the market for a new job, but I switched roles at the beginning of 2022 and I made it a point of starting my conversations with recruiters by telling them rather directly "I have no concerns about my ability to do whatever is necessary within the job, my only question is are you willing to pay me what I'm worth?" The company I eventually accepted a position at had to go through a lot of internal bureaucracy to make my offer, but only put me through one round of interviewing before they did the legwork to make sure they could make it worth my while before running me through their entire process. I think it's especially rich that HR people think you're wasting /their/ time when they make you an insultingly low offer after extensive interviewing, especially considering there's a massive skills gap between tech workers and HR folks (who are a dime a dozen).