Spend Your Career Capital
As you progress in your career, becoming a stronger engineer and delivering more value you're going to build up trust and goodwill with the people you work with, both leadership and peers. This is your career capital. Now you need to figure out what to do with it.
The more trusted you are, the more you are responsible for setting your own path. Shifting from the early career mindset of needing to wait for directions or stay on a specific path can be a tough transition for some, so it's worth taking the time to think about what you value and how you want to make use of your career capital to get it.
Spending this capital can be in service of directing your career into new domains or teams. It can mean advocating for technologies or processes or culture within your organization. It can also mean enforcing the work/life balance you want. The important thing is recognizing what you value and understanding how to use your career capital to pursue it.