The good news is that management knows I'd like to do something else, and the customer wants me doing the something else.
The bad news? They know I'm capable of this too and there's no-one else yet! One of the management guys even came by and joked that I looked natural at it.... escape, escape! In the meantime I'm dealing with budget and schedule projections, budget change requests, performance shortfalls, team member transfers, short handedness, lack of backup information, new quote requests, people planning, possible poaching from other teams, installation issues with the customer.... oh, and my system engineer and several team members are on vacation this week...
So far the best thing about the job is being able to look out the window and see the construction equipment digging a large hole in the parking lot. Oh, and management talks to me like I'm human. They would have undoubtedly done it before, but I stayed out of their area. Yep, just flex those senior staff engineer muscles...