Engineers at Volkswagen and its other brands (Porsche, Audi, Seat, Skoda) are paid quite well compared to other industries in Germany (only two others come to mind, finance and chemicals). Software engineers can realistically reach up to 80-90000€ a year, plus bonuses (although only with experience, newcomers start at around 50-60000€).

Although most of the innovation in the automotive sector still comes from small and large suppliers (like Bosch or Vector for example). A software and platform centric approach to functional development is only just coming to the big OEMs (BMW or Audi are very active in AI)

Huh? BMW is in Munich, Mercedes is in Stuttgart, Ford is near Cologne, all count as big cities in Germany. They're definitely not sleepy villages.

Ok, Audi is in small-ish Ingolstadt, VW is in Wolfsburg...(but they also have a factory in Dresden).

Only if you do machine learning (140k EUR) or Big Data (110k EUR). German C1 is often a must; EEU citizens not welcome.