Ask HN: Software Engineer hitting 40: what's next?

I've been working in software engineering for 18 years. I worked mostly as individual contributor (now as a Senior Staff Engineer), also I was an Engineering Manager for couple years. Now I am interviewing after a few years at the company, and I am hit by harsh reality. For the context, I am in Europe, not in the US. I like technologies and programming, I want to further improve my skills in designing and developing reliable and maintainable distributed system, make better technical decisions. Also, I want to keep learning and playing with new techs. I am now interviewing for the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer, My expectations for the roles like Staff / Principal Engineer are that while staying hands-on, say for 30%, I will primarily use more my skills in architecture, engineering, and communications to focus on large, important pieces of functionality, technical decisions with big impact, etc. I expect that I would report to a Director or VP level manager, so tha