> There are many other possible ways to achieve this, but the point is that further contribution at this point usually needs a radically different way. I do see that many companies tend to grant a title of "Staff Engineer" to those folks able to figure out how to handle this situation.
In my own experience it's also entirely common for your comp and responsibilities to grow and grow until your working peers are all directors, VPs, and heads of this or that and you're meant to act as their API layer to an entire team of humans executing on your technical direction, but your title is just Senior Engineer.
Internally everyone understands this and treats you accordingly, but it sure looks bad on linkedin.
My experience is those are generally technically immature organizations. Everyone knows that "John" is consulted across departments and pulled in by senior leaders, that he's guiding the technical of multiple teams ands areas of the business. But management can't quite explain what it is so they give John more money and his title remains unchanged.
It’s possible to assign further ranks to subdivide titles appropriately.
e.g. The most important senior engineer, with an equivalent rank just one level below the CTO, would be the ‘First rank X Engineer’, then the next level below would be the ‘Second rank X Engineer’, and so on…
There are usually tech industry levels above senior like staff, principal, distinguished engineer. I think the OP's problem is they didn't get a title increase.
In my own experience it's also entirely common for your comp and responsibilities to grow and grow until your working peers are all directors, VPs, and heads of this or that and you're meant to act as their API layer to an entire team of humans executing on your technical direction, but your title is just Senior Engineer.
Internally everyone understands this and treats you accordingly, but it sure looks bad on linkedin.