Looks like the big money in IT in Malaysia is in sales.

Another update after a year.
Job Title : Software Engineer
Job Desciption : SDN, NFV, system optimisation
Age : 42
Years spent in company : 6 years
Company : US MNC
Industry : Tech
Tenure : Permanent
Employment Level : Engineer
Experience before joining (years) : 14 years
Highest paper qualification/ education background : PhD
Location : KL
Average Working Hours Per Week (incl lunch hours): 35

Monetary Payout
Basic Salary + Fixed Allowance : ~RM 29k
Contractual Bonus (months): none
Performance, Variable Bonus & Commissions (months) : up to 20% of annual salary for average performer (got a 40% multiplier this year), some special spot bonuses that range between 1-5k USD depending on the management's discretion

Benefits (where relevant) :
Health Benefits : Expat package medical, dental
Transport Benefits : None
Mobile / Internet / Gadget Benefits : Laptop, no internet subsidies.
Flexi Working Hours : can WFH as long as you deliver.
Other Benefits : monthly team lunch, company dinners a few times a year pre covid

Ringgit. Spot bonuses are in USD before being converted. Used to have some other bonuses denominated in USD as well. Hoping will see a big rise in 22/23 due to some coming positive changes. Hanging on for a while more. Might try to push for promotion next year.

Determination , hard-work, and working on things that interest me, and a large dose of luck to get an opportunity.

For example, my degree was in electronics but I liked networking and programming and spent most of my time doing that. I worked on Linux at a time when it didn't work right out of the box. First thing you did was make sure the modem worked, then you tried to get the graphic drivers to compile, and then the sound card drivers. Sometimes it took a week just to bring up the computer to a fully working state with GUI and sound after classes, but I learned a lot of debugging and that is extremely useful in my work. I guess time and effort I put in at that stage didn't seem useful, but looking back, it probably got me to be able to debug problems much better than my peers.
For my current job, there was also a slice of luck involved. They wanted to hire my friend, but he didn't want to move to KL. He recommended me but I was happily teaching at that time and rejected it. 6-7 months later, a recruiter called from that company. I was unhappy with some things at work, and decided to speak to the director. He started talking about optimisation of hybrid and multicore architectures, which I was working on as well. He liked me and referred me to the hiring manager in US. I requested for 15k after the interview, he offered almost 20k with very generous RSUs and annual bonus. Guess it was the right place at the right time. However, I was also prepared for it because I spent extra time after my normal classes teaching interested undergrads programming, which kept me sharp, I worked on consultancy projects for companies, and I spent time reading and doing hands-on work in cutting edge things.