Can a backwards move help your career in the long run?

Hey folks. I know no early career advice is part of the rules, so if this still qualifies as that, apologies in advance.

I've been in an engineering role for a few years now (after having moved up from an admin role). My work load is a pretty solid balance of engineering (building out new fabrics, cloud environments, etc) and break/fix or other administrative tasks (firewall access, for example). I work for a relatively large online retailer with a lot of exposure to different systems -- CDN, Linux fabrics, Cisco, GCP, Citrix, and so on.

Recently I got approached by a significantly larger company after interviewing with them last year (the position was either filled or eliminated during the interview process, no hard feelings). Anyway, the impression I got was that this would be more of a break/fix NOC role, with little-to-no direct engineering.

A lot folks make the point that sometimes it's best to get your foot in the door to open up future opportunities. Has anyone taken a new position at a new company that maybe felt like a step backwards instead of a direct, lateral move? Was it worth it? Do you have any advice for good, probing questions during the interview process?

Would really appreciate any insight some folks could offer. Apologies if the details provided are a bit vague -- just trying to be cautious about mentioning the employers.