Defining a Distinguished Engineer
You can exhibit leadership and all those things at a much lower job tile.On a semi-related note: I really dislike job titles. They make people think in labels. The most powerful feature of a team of creators is their idiosyncrasies. The best way I found to build something as a team is to adapt the work to the strengths of the individuals. Job titles squash the peculiar strengths and differences into a label and make organizations treat people as fungible units of work. Too many organizations define the work first and then assign it to the individuals, rather than define the work based on the individuals.