You're describing the role of the tech lead or lead dev, not senior developer... at least not anywhere I've worked or known people who worked. Senior developers

You're describing the role of the tech lead or lead dev, not senior developer... at least not anywhere I've worked or known people who worked. Senior developers is the sweet spot where you get to do a nice bit of architecting and still mainly write code. It's as high as you can usually go in the tech tree without having to deal with the 'manager' stuff you mention. Really sounds like that last job was just garbage and you moved on to someplace better. Had nothing to do with the position other than it wasn't the lead position you wanted.