The issue is there's not necessarily any fair measurement of "higher level engineer". With stack ranking if you've got five people on a team only one member of the team can be the top quintile getting the majority of compensation. Even if the work of everyone is roughly the same. It's asinine.
There's also no clarity into how to be considered the top of the rankings. The only guidance from managers is to "innovate" and work more.
It's a really demoralizing system unless you're at the top of the stack. It's further demoralizing that the managers are told in no uncertain terms to make the system as opaque as possible.