Nope.

I do not say that experts have to be put in charge of people instead of doing what they're doing.

I rather say that experts should be in charge of what they are doing.

I think this is the case with real engineering companies. My wife works at Rijkswaterstaat, and there engineers bear direct responsibility for projects that are worth lives, and they can make important decisions about those projects for that reason. For example, a couple of years ago an engineer closed a bridge because of a lack of maintenance. Big scandal about the bridge getting closed, but the real scandal was that maintenance was so far behind. Turned out the engineer had warned about this several times before, but somehow those messages didn't arrive at the people in charge of planning and funding maintenance. So that was the process that really needed fixing (and the bridge, of course).

I think this is a good option. I also have no problem with experts being put in charge of people. Truthfully I think the bigger issue is that there's not more ways for growth. But at this point I'd settle for just ways to grow in the technical side without needing to move to management (being a group lead or having people under you is something I'd consider different when your main job is still doing technical work)