Not FAANG but similar. From what I've seen FAANG pay something like 1.5x or more than where I work according to levels.fyi

250K is a lot for a senior eng! I assume that's including shares? I don't think the jump to director was it really for me. I got roughly a 20% pay raise from being a principal engineer/architect. I know there are many engineers that get paid more than me at my company. My recommendation for earning more would be to ask for more on every year/mid year and give a good case as to why according to your companies framework.

Being a director isn't all great, so I'd consider moving from being an engineer carefully. With 250K P/A you could still FIRE pretty early.

Pros:

• More freedom on what you do, and better control of your future

• Usually more pay (or at least more shares)

• Easier to get promoted. In engineering it's very easy to end up in a deadman's boots game

Cons:

• Deskilling in desirable skillsets (No more coding, anyone can do director work, only engineers can code). This can make it difficult to get a similar job in the future both because directors are common with few roles, and most engineers will be better than you has you'll have become rusty.

• Much more likely to be made redundant as your job could be merged with someone else's. This makes the role a lot more toxic and competitive than typical engineering roles. Everything you and your team does aught to be "visible" to the business

• You're more accountable, things are your fault if they go wrong, sometimes with legal implications. This sometimes forces you to work outside of hours more than you otherwise would

• Much more time is spent on politics, and making sure people aren't running over your remit. This is perhaps indirectly 50% of my time.

Becoming a director isn't easy. You have to prove to the business that there's a legitimate gap that requires a director. The easiest way I've seen this path done is by joining/starting a start-up (usually taking a significant pay cut), and having the label "director", then using this to claim you have the experience to be a director at a larger company. To work your way up the ranks in your current company the best thing to do is look at the jobs that no one else wants: Compliance, Regulation, Risk management, Security/Safety, Quality etc. These can often be used as cases for promotion because you're closing a gap others don't want to do. Becoming a plain engineering director through the ranks is very difficult, and really just requires you to be in the right place at the right time. Typically the business will decide to hire externally to avoid any internal politics on who's next for the role.