[dougabug]

Deliver, on-time, consistently. Exceed expectations for quality of execution. See things through end-to-end instead of staying within your silo; anticipate challenges across the entire process and deal with them effectively. Make sure your contributions have impact, and that they are recognized.

If you do all of that, and you still don’t rise in the ranks, leave: it’s them, not you.

On the other hand, if you are okay with not being promoted, then stay. Your employer correctly gauges that promotion is not needed to retain your services. Or they feel that they could live without your continued contributions.

If you are committed to staying, they don’t necessarily need to know that. You could get an outside job offer and see if your current employer counters. How badly do they want to keep you? Or you could switch to another team within the same company which is willing to take you on in a leadership or leadership track role.