I’ve had similar experiences when working on my research project. I had a mentor who had years of research experience. While some of my issues were unique in that we both didn’t know how to solve them, his experiences allowed us to quickly find relevant papers and figure out which option would work best with our situation. He also started as an assistant researcher so he knew how to guide me to the answer instead of just giving it to me.
I think the perfect manager would be an engineer that has developed and practiced management skills over the years. A well seasoned engineer who became a manager would be familiar with the types of challenges an engineer would have to overcome. An engineering mindset is necessary for the manager to understand and guide the engineer.