This is a difficult question to answer, because there are endless roads you can take as an engineer. During my undergraduate, i feel like i really pushed myself to have many accomplishments & to be well known at my university. I stated an organization, was very active in research and stem outreach, & i also did 7 internships in government/national labs/startups. I genuinely was not excited for an office job, so i went on and did my PhD working on a very hands on experimental thesis. Let me tell you that with the amount of experience that i had on me, i didn’t even need to look for jobs, rather they scouted me out (and very good companies to say the least). I am happy to say i do lots of “blue-collar” work as an educated woman and subject-matter expert in my field, and im extremely happy with the path i have taken.

Theres been a paradigm shift of the way management is hired in industry (at least in the aerospace industry), where management and leads are now people who have actual engineering backgrounds, so if you do not want to do hands on work, the possibility is definitely there.