It is unclear from this request, but if this is the cost to the employer it is almost certainly a larger number than the actual pay which goes to the individual.

Cost of living in Corvallis <<< Cost of living in Seattle

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

$150k is not "higher than an SDE in Seattle", unless you meant to say "higher than the average salary for an entry-level junior SDE role in Seattle."

That does seem to pretty clearly be what they meant, given the rest of the sentence.

There are usually three main levels people talk about, entry, mid career, and sr. If you say SDE, I'd assume a mid-career person, which is 100% earning way more then 150k in Seattle. https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... has more data.

In Big Tech(tm) you’d have at least lead/staff and principal on top of those levels, who make even more.