Maybe when I was younger. Though I doubt the pay is great and you'd be pretty promotion capped. I think I'd be good at it, no doubt, but that is just a facet of the job I do now. My program employs non-fed data analysts like that position, I tell them what I need and then use that information in my decision making, I'm more like a coach now in that regard.
Low level design got pretty boring when I did it after a while, it would have been nice to change things up and do data analytics while still moving toward career advancement.
It sounds like you did something pretty similar to what I do now. Most fed jobs are pretty similar even if in different agencies, we are still beholden to the FAR and its variants and the overall federal budget process. I manage all the work going through a few air traffic control centers. Its a good gig, management, without actually managing people, only projects. Very little in the way of busy work, but lots and lots of meetings. In a cube, yes, but design engineering was that way too, now (well when not 100% teleworking) I spend a lot less time in my cube and a lot more in meetings, formal and informal.
Nothing beat the day to day job of Resident Engineering, every day at work was a different adventure and its very hands on. But its a 100% travel position, and that gets old real quick. The highs of being design lead were the best, where I'm coming up with new standard designs and practices, pushing systems into the future, but that was only like 5% of the work, and when you get a taste for that, ho hum design with no interesting problems to solve, that is the other 95%, gets really, really lame. Program manager is more like resident engineer without the hands on part, something different every day.
