I made the move from engineer to manager. Along the way, I managed colleagues and friends I used to sit beside while I was an engineer. It's difficult but you l

I made the move from engineer to manager. Along the way, I managed colleagues and friends I used to sit beside while I was an engineer. It's difficult but you learn a lot about managing, and more importantly, leading. I believe you'll need to move to a larger company (I did mine at a public company but our location had about 1000 people). I've done a lot of hiring (as a manager) and I was always looking for a good mix of tech and management skills. Shoot for the first role at a larger company as being mostly based on your engineering skills but make it clear that you would like to use your team management abilities more. At larger companies, there's always lots of projects and lots of role to fill so you'd definitely get more chances at moving 100% into a management role.