Congratulations on your promotion to Senior Engineer. You can now maintain the title while doing absolutely nothing of substance.
Step 1: Attend every meeting, especially the ones you were not invited to. Your presence alone signals importance. Nod occasionally. Say "that is a great point" at least twice per meeting.
Step 2: When asked any technical question, respond with "it depends." This is always correct. Should we use microservices? It depends. Should we add caching? It depends. Should I mass delete production data? IT DEPENDS (on whether you want to keep your job, but the answer is still technically correct).
Step 3: Review pull requests at the speed of continental drift. Leave comments like "nit: spacing" and "have we considered the long-term implications of this variable name?" Request changes. Approve three days later with no further comment.
Step 4: Write a Confluence document titled "Technical Vision 2027" that nobody will ever read. Reference it in meetings. "As I outlined in the technical vision doc..." Nobody will admit they have not read it. You now own the narrative.
Step 5: Mention "tech debt" at every sprint planning. It does not matter what the feature is. "Before we build this, we should address the underlying tech debt." You never have to specify which tech debt. Everything qualifies once tech debt is a state of being.
Step 6: Block your calendar with "Deep Work" blocks. Four hours a day minimum. Nobody knows what happens during deep work, and nobody is allowed to ask. That is the beauty of it.
Step 7: Whenever a junior engineer asks for help, say "what do YOU think we should do?" They will figure it out themselves. You get credit for mentorship.
You are now operating at a strategic level. Welcome to the top.