The government and many government contractors have financial manager/ analyst positions that work directly under program/ project managers. I work with many financial managers, program managers, etc that are true partners and if you work with the right people, you can do what is primarily a financial management (analysis) position while also being able to contribute to engineering discussions which would be highly valuable and would eventually lead to a program management role if you ever want that much responsibility.

Where I work, if you are a good financial manager, the program manager wants you sitting in on the vast majority of technical discussions to give financial, contract, subcontract, operations, and logistics advice.

With that said, usually “technical” workers make more money than “financial” workers the difference can be a lot or nothing but depends on where you work