I can't speak for the direct OP, however outside of exceedingly large companies, rarely do you get to just be a major contributor and still climb past a certain point. Microsoft and Google have things like distinguished engineers but most people never reach these levels, because you have to be truly outstanding to attain them, and often, they too are really good at managing their sphere of influence.

As a Staff Engineer I'm just a really engineering focused manager "lite" if you will, (in so many ways, maybe I'm not doing enough justice here, but its how it feels day to day).

I like it, because I'm managing the architecture side of things and still involved in engineering decisions I care about, but I have both direct people working with me that I'm accountable for, as well as a 2nd level of accountability for the entire organization. I still get to commit code and do exploratory research, which is nice, but its not the highest percentage of work I do. So much of it is overseeing the implementation details of other engineers, providing guidance to both engineering as an org, or individual engineers, or being involved in product roadmap so that our architecture evolves flexibly enough to meet where we want to go, writing documentation and diagrams, giving technical presentations etc.

All told, at some point, you have to be a manager, even if its not a direct "manager" role, per se.