My experience is a bit different, the end role for engineers that don't want to land in management is usually becoming an architect, or staying as tech lead forever, unless they branch out into consulting.
From what I've seen a rather typical trajectory is towards a product manager if you are in a tech megacorp or CTO if you are in a small upstart/company (who of course is nothing like CTO at a megacorp). YMMV of course.
