In our company there are, informally, two ways to operate at the staff level and above: - Be an expert in a single domain, eventually up to the point where you

In our company there are, informally, two ways to operate at the staff level and above: - Be an expert in a single domain, eventually up to the point where you are pushing the state of the art of that domain forward with conference presentations etc. - Be someone who takes a broader perspective on efforts and ensures that sound technical choices are being made and organizational/ technical roadblocks to getting those technical choices implemented are resolved. Either way, your role is as a force-multiplier, and you are having a broad impact on the org. Cross-team leadership is perhaps more assumed with the second role than the first. But it is rare I think to come into an engagement having built up the networks you need to operate at that level, so a year spent as a senior engineer and building up those networks might not be so bad if the fit is right. Hope that helps!