You have an idea to help with a company pain point, that is a great!\
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First do not stress about ideas. Good jobs come with numerous hard problems to solve.\
In general the execution matters way more than an idea. \
If the company decides to assign the lead to someone else you can still help. It might even be a perfect mentorship opportunity for you.

Think about the following. If you were yo have an important surgery would you prefer an experienced doctor who has done this many times or a newbie that is just learning?

Regardless of the project getting funded or who will lead it I would focus on developing your senior engineer skills. This will require you to come up with designs and get them reviewed.\
Senior engineers rarely work in isolation so it is your opportunity to write a design document and present it to a larger audience. The more effort you put into your designs the higher the chance you will be working on that project in some capacity. \
One way or another you need to get your ideas into the open and be able to address any feedback. This is an important skill for a senior engineer.

Good luck!

Principal Software Engineer at CrowdStrike

Radu Ciocas

Staff+ roles come with additional responsibilities and based on my experience and other staff/principal engineers I know, work life balance can take a hit. How much of hit or how long of hit will depend on your skills, your team & company, your ability to learn and develop the skills necessary at this level. \
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Let's address your questions.

1. I don't think it is unrealistic to have work life balance at staff+ roles. However I consider unrealistic to expect staff+ to be a senior engineer job with a higher salary. The responsibilities will be different and you will need to adapt based on the needs of your role and your [staff archetype](https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes/).
2. Stress is entirely under your control. You decide how you respond to every situation. You can expect to be held to higher standards and have more ambiguous problems to solve. How you respond to these higher expectations is totally up to you: your abilities, your health, your prioritization skills etc.

Different people could mean different things by working independently. I would ask your manager for examples of working independently and cases where you could have been more independent. \
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Without context it is hard to give a precise answer. It might be a number of things, here are some examples that might apply or not: to your situation

- You might be waiting too long to seek help to get unblocked. Or it might be the perception that you're waiting too long. This could happen for example if you work on multiple tasks at the same time but your manager doesn't know about all of them so he might think you've waited too long to seek help on the one task he's aware of.
- The quality of code might not be as good as your colleagues. Or it could be that your code looks very different from that of your team mates.
- You're asking questions that already have an answer in internal documentation

Also try to put yourself in your manager's shoes and try to come up with reasons to why he might be seeing you as less independent. Also try to get some feedback from some of your more senior colleagues with who you work frequently. You might get a different perspective.\
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Hope this helps!