This will be a very unpopular opinion here but as someone who has managed a few different engineering departments and now a CTO I agree with the premise of the

This will be a very unpopular opinion here but as someone who has managed a few different engineering departments and now a CTO I agree with the premise of the post. A single business/mentor oriented senior+ engineer is an unbelievably effective force multiplier. One engineer can then take 2-3 very jr engineers and drive a small cost effective team. Such a team needs little product support given its lead is product oriented, and the technical architecture is unified as more junior engineers follow the leads standards to grow and learn from them. On top of that in 2-3 years those jr engineers often become exceptionally effective business/tech focused engineers themselves. Disclaimer: For this to work you need to either be a very small company and/or have a culture that doesnt use the product team/department as a wall between business and tech.