[cogg]

At the teams I have managed at larger companies (Stamps.com, TrueCar) the technical track had official equivalents to management roles (Sr. Engineer -> Manager, Architect -> Director, Sr. Architect -> VP) for determining compensation, equity and any other role defined "perks."

Each of those roles also came with leadership expectations: Architects were responsible for the overall technical health of the systems they were responsible for, with Sr. Architects being responsible for multiple. They were empowered to reject system changes and were expected to review code and designs on a regular basis. Really good engineers that weren't system thinkers or didn't want responsibility for other people's code, could increase in compensation but weren't considered part of the leadership team.