There are similar issues in a lot of high tech companies. Come in as an engineer but get evaluated for how well you can lead other engineers. If you really want to do software, it's worth looking for companies that have "two tracks". I left one company because it got swallowed by another. The engineering track didn't seem to be taken seriously in that larger company, excepting a couple of research-only facilities which seemed to require a PhD to get into - and they weren't doing software anyway (this was early days of quantum computing). They offered me an extra $40K to stay, but I was more interested in the work than the money (and that was back when a $40K bump was a *lot*).