What would you do in my position?

Hi everyone! I'm currently a Sales Development Trainer with 4 years of tech sales experience and 14 years of total professional experience. As an SDR, I worked for 3 years + 7 months with one company, an 18-month break from working altogether during COVID, and currently working for the new company for 3 months but as a trainer.

My end career goal is to be a VP of Sales. I have no interest in being an Account Executive but am terribly interested in moving into Sales Engineering and/or Management. I planned to stay with my current company for 9-12 months before applying for a new role elsewhere. I've had an Associate Sales Engineer and Business Development Manager position fall into my lap from recruiters on LinkedIn and they've unknowingly pushed my timeline up.

My base pay is currently $65K and I maybe work a total of 15ish hours a week, on a busy week. The Associate SE position is possibly paying $80K base (very low for the market) + commission and the BDR Manager role is paying on the "high end" $60K base (extremely low for the market) with total OTE being $90K.

I'm in the 3rd round of interviews for the ASE position and had my phone screening with the recruiter today for the BDR Manager position. I'm needing feedback on what I should do next. I was contemplating moving forward with the BDG Mgr position interviews and working there for 3-6 months for the experience and job title then preparing my resume to leave and find another company with a possible $50K+ pay bump. A friend advised me to skip that route and take leadership certs and add "motherhood" to my resume to showcase leadership skills. My only reservations with the ASE position is the recruiter lowballing me on the pay but I'm optimistic about my interviewing skills and feel that I may be offered more in the end.

I know this was a terribly long read but I appreciate your time.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do as a next step?

Are you expected to work 40 hours for these other roles? And when you say you want to move into sales engineering or management, what type of management do you mean? Does this BD manager role fit the bill?Your post focuses a lot on the pay and title and how you could use these roles as a stepping stone—which seems valid.But how else will your quality of life be impacted if you change roles? How are the people, the culture, the expectations? Do you feel you'll be learning there? It sounds as if pay and title are your current motivators, but at the same time, the pay for these positions is not very exciting to you and you'll be job hopping to do it. (Not that there's anything wrong with that—but two 3-month stints in a row can be a ding for some roles when you go to apply again.)Direct experience trumps certifications any day, that's for sure. I'd invite you to consider what happens if you end up in one of these roles for longer than you initially planned.Congrats on being in the running through inbound contact, by the way! That's a great signal that this won't be your only chance to transition.