[fy20]

Definately consider if you want to become part of management. Other than a more glamorous title I don't think it's really worth it (in Europe). For most companies pay is not much more than engineers, and in some cases can be lower than a specialist. If you want to earn more, contracting (when the market picks up) is much more lucrative.

I transitioned from senior engineer to engineering manager a couple of years ago. Maybe it's just this company, but I feel I enjoyed being an engineer more. Definately less meetings and less stress. Plus when you go to the next job hunt, there are more engineer jobs available.

On the other hand, if you feel that your engineering skills are a bit lacking (no offense intended), but your have strong soft skills, then it would make sense to go this route. The best head of engineering I worked for was a mediocre developer, but his soft skills were amazing.

[ManchesterDev]

I agree with both the comments. At the moment there are no progression paths which don’t involve moving up into doing more management, but I’ll still be spending 75-80% of time writing code. If the company was larger there may have been other options internally to focus on technical roles.

[jon-wood]

Be very cautious about “you’ll still be writing code” promises. A team of three is a significant time investment, and I’m highly dubious that leading a team can be done in 1 day a week, at least if you want to do it well.

At the very least you’re going to have to learn how to write code while being regularly interrupted, and in my experience that means you’ll have to let go of doing anything interesting because you’ll end up blocking work due to unexpected things coming up.