In the European companies they are not. From my experience (UK Financial Services primarily), they are equivalent to a US Staff Engineer with authority over Design and Implementation. Typically looking after a team or two of engineers of various levels of experience.
There's also a broad amount of "socialising" the design/system internally to generate "buy-in" across the organisation. Which is the tedious bit for me, but hey, the money is good.
Sometimes they are, but that's not what you want. Other times, it's like what you've described but unfortunately with much less (or even zero) hand-on work, and more meetings and dealing with internal bureucracy.
BTW to me, it looks like what you want is a tech lead role.
Tech Lead with some business involvement. I've run my own small consulting companies in the past, just haven't had the nerve to do that here in the US, mainly due to cost of health insurance.
cutthegrass2|5 years ago
There's also a broad amount of "socialising" the design/system internally to generate "buy-in" across the organisation. Which is the tedious bit for me, but hey, the money is good.
TheMog|5 years ago
Pretty much any growth in my work will require me working on the people skills side of things, which is something I'm already working on.
killtimeatwork|5 years ago
BTW to me, it looks like what you want is a tech lead role.
TheMog|5 years ago