Don't be afraid - lots of serious companies hire older coders. Those roles carry various titles - Principals, Architects, etc., but basically it is the non-man

Don't be afraid - lots of serious companies hire older coders. Those roles carry various titles - Principals, Architects, etc., but basically it is the non-management track. In my team it's architects, senior programmers in both age and skill. Use them for code reviews, query tuning, investigating infrastructure/code improvements, etc. Invaluable help, true multipliers.