Not really. Depends on how small though. To operate at the staff level you need approximately team scope, so you need to be setting the direction for about 8-12 engineers worth of work. If the org is small enough that this is all of engineering then there’s not a lot of room unless the CTO wants to delegate it to you so they can do something else. If you’re big enough there’s multiple teams then maybe, but there’s a lot of overlap with management and small orgs tend to ask managers to be TLMs (tech lead managers) so there’s not a lot of opportunity to demonstrate operating at the staff level.
Not really. Depends on how small though. To operate at the staff level you need approximately team scope, so you need to be setting the direction for about 8-12 engineers worth of work. If the org is small enough that this is all of engineering then there’s not a lot of room unless the CTO wants to delegate it to you so they can do something else. If you’re big enough there’s multiple teams then maybe, but there’s a lot of overlap with management and small orgs tend to ask managers to be TLMs (tech lead managers) so there’s not a lot of opportunity to demonstrate operating at the staff level.