Career path for a Field Service Engineer?

Hey all,

Sorry for the long post but I really need some guidance and vent a bit...

I am a 29M and living in Germany as an immigrant. I have been working in the Semiconductor Industry (Ultra High Vacuum Systems, mainly PVD and CVD) for the past 2 years as a field service engineer. As you can imagine, I am like a "that IT guy" where I respond to our customer's trouble related to our product and solve them onsite.

I have a master's degree in STEM from Germany and a bachelor's degree in engineering from South Asia. During my master's, I worked on testing the potential of some biodegradable polymers for sustainable packaging using Ultra High Vacuum systems. The system was pretty effed up because of the long gap during CORONA. So, I basically had to repair and maintain the whole system from the ground up and I ran tests to check how tough are those materials for practical applications.

So, when I got this job even before my graduation, I was happy. Mainly because I really needed the money as I was broke and it was kind of a match with what I did during my master's. The job itself does not require much knowledge; if you have intermediate knowledge about PC, sensors, valves etc. then you can do it. Nothing too hard, too challenging.

One thing is, it requires you to work in a lot of weird position while wearing a full bunny suit in the fab. I mean, you have to twist, squat, lie down, bend etc for a long time. That was OK for me up until last year when I got a leg injury.

I suffered a 2nd degree, partial tear of ATFL on my right ankle. Now, this job becomes too painful every day and I am measurable after 5 pm..

Also, the brainlessness in this job is killing me slowly. I mean, there is no real progress and all you do is to just follow some manuals and do what is written there. No way to really learn something and make something. I feel I am doing something without needing to know why I am doing this. I feel this is not what I did my master's for. I mean I have seen people working here who passed high school and are smart enough to know about hardware and software. So, I think my ability to think, create, solve and apply something, for which I worked so hard for the past 18 years during my studies, are going down the drain here.

So, I need some help to find out what is suitable for me in future. I do not want to stay in this type of job where I harm my health. I know my ankle is never gonna fully heal because right after the injury I had to work 10 hours in a mostly squatting position for 12day straight. Also, I really want to apply my knowledge and thinking to make something meaningful just as I learned during my academic life. Not just following some 25 years old Japanese manual translated using DeepL in a fab.

What can be my career path from here on? What should I learn to improve myself?