Folks who go beyond Sr. Engineer are very much into putting their ducks in a row -- with extreme prejudice. They become CTO, Consultant, Senior Member of the Te

Folks who go beyond Sr. Engineer are very much into putting their ducks in a row -- with extreme prejudice. They become CTO, Consultant, Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Fellow, Startup Partner. That person initiates projects, begins the R&D, writes the proposal, estimates the budget, create slides and do presentations, evangelizes the ideas. You sometimes orchestrate prototype development if you don't get to put one together yourself. If necessary you take the idea and build a company around it.