You need to think about the following to really define what you are looking for:

- What percentage of time do you want to spend coding vs doing other things like helping/guiding other devs, project management etc. 80 20 ? 60 40 ?

- Are you willing to come in to a team/company and use what they have versus redoing everything ? Do you have a preference for language/stack ? If there is a team that does PHP, would you be interested or only want to work in <latest_hottest_language> ?

- How do you expect to grow further as an Individual Contributor ? What could you do to make yourself more valuable to the company/team every 12 months ? I ask because you want to grow further and you have to define what that is exactly. One of the reasons senior devs start managing because that is easier to measure in terms of growth and impact. If you are a great developer, how can you keep justifying growth (salary etc) every year ? What should be metrics for it ?

What's not clear to me from your text: what kind of role are you looking for? I.e. what are you missing from the "senior developer" roles?

I know one thing that if people in this thread write books, I'll buy a copy. Contact info is in the profile for when it's out.

All the best to you all,

Just an idea you probably have thought about... Have you considered opening a boutique consultancy and doing business through it? It won't be the megacorp, and the person in charge, you, will actually be capable of wrapping their head around someone like yourselves? I say "yourselves" because there may be people in your situation who'll find it interesting. Name it "Cache", a pun on "cash" and invalidated grizzled software veterans to pool in their networks and save the day.

> very senior software engineer >> they do seem to occasionally look for this type of engineer

I have worked for one of those giants as a senior engineer with almost as much experience as yours, I don't remember many engineers actively developing beyond the senior level (level 63/64 at MS for reference) but we did have quite a few old guys (and a bit less girls) at those levels.

40 years and still programming here. I get freelance gigs through contacts, word of mouth, and an agency that represents me. Before freelancing I got f/t jobs for a long time solely through contacts and former co-workers. I’d start with your professional network. Job boards and gig marketplaces are a last resort, IMO.

A great question. I'm partially-grizzled (only 20 years experience) and looking for the same thing. Some sort of Principle Software Engineer with technical focus and no direct people management responsibilities. Searching LinkedIn brings back plenty of job hits...but it's mostly MegaCorp jobs like you mention.