They pay top-end for the local market. However, if a competitor comes in paying Bay Area salaries for remote work, that can be a lot higher than local wages.
That doesn't seem surprising -- why would they?
https://nz.linkedin.com/jobs/gitlab-jobs?position=1&pageNum=...
Now, that creates two markets, those who can't move to the US (won't pass the higher bar for US immigration) and those who won't. I've seen SV comp for the latter. But we're talking O-1 tier engineers.