Engg Manager want to get into IC role

Dear Friends, I am a Sr. Engg manager at one of the publicly traded companies. With recent changes, things have changed and the product I was leading has been put to cold storage. There has been high attrition too because of these above pay scale decisions. I have been trying to look for new opportunities in the same tech stack / domain but it seems I am lacking things that the companies in the same domain need. My tech stack have been around scala / spark. But I have not been into coding a lot during the recent times. It has mostly been on process/ development management / team management.

I have also been through few interviews. But here the experience has been poles apart. Some companies are asking me to come up with a scalable design to a problem statement, while other companies are asking me very deep into people management skills. Question to the community : What is it that the hiring managers are looking for in today's scheme of Engg Mamanger requirements? Is it a wise decision to get into an IC role at this point of career. If yes, what are some things that the community would suggest?