Join A Software Product Team

A decent career path is to join a soft Product Team

• being "close to revenue generation" makes you valuable to the business (note this is less true in an advertising-supported business)
• being close to Customers provides potential for real market feedback vs political/stakeholder craziness

I'm partial to being a Product Manager, but think the best path there is by being a developer first.

Being a designer isn't a bad choice, but tends to be evaluated on the wrong things/process.

All this assumes you're in a place following Agile Product Development. This is surprisingly rare.