Perhaps if you can't advance inside the company it's time to advance outside the company. They may well consider you as "an engineer with little prior experien

Perhaps if you can't advance inside the company it's time to advance outside the company. They may well consider you as "an engineer with little prior experience, and we only gave him that role because we couldn't afford someone experienced yet". To the next firm, you are an engineer with experience building a company's central product from the ground up and leading a team of 40+ people in a high risk start-up environment.