Surviving Role Misalignment (i Will Not Promote)

Hi! I have a decade of experience specialised in Data and ML platforms. My past roles have been at scaleups and corporates as Senior DE and Staff ML Engineer, mainly focussed on Production ML systems and Data Platform engineering. I've worked for both cross-functional product and platform teams.

Unfortunately over the last year, I've been let go of from 2 VC-funded startups (Series A, company size of ~100 people) after spending only 3 months in each. In both cases, it's been a senior executive (CEO of a 60ppl FinTech startup, or a VP-Engg of a 120ppl e-Commerce startup) being impressed with my years of experience from brand companies and hiring me as a Senior Engineer for my hybrid Data & ML skills, thereby getting more than what they asked for in the JD. Upon joining, these executives who sponsor me never get involved in my tactical/day-to-day responsibilities, with the teams/mid-level management struggling to understand where to place me best. Because of this, I've ended up both times with Analytics-facing work, and being held accountable for delivering Data Analytics projects, despite being upfront from the beginning that my skills are on the platform and infrastructure side (MLOps, data platform engineering), and that I wouldn't be the right person to own the metrics layer (although I'm always happy to collaborate with a team member on it).

The second company (the e-Commerce one) had a slightly better org structure: a new Data Science team embedded in the product org, and a dedicated Data Platform Engineer on the core platform team. The VP's vision was for me to be a bridge between the two teams, but it was never clearly materialized with the product stakeholders. I went from being a top performer as the only data person in a product team, building an amazingly complex data pipeline and architecture, to being placed on leave and then let go within three months, having failed to deliver against success metrics that weren't properly aligned to business outcomes. This was also a high visibility project, and my part ended up losing trust.

Given that most hiring I see right now is with startups, is there a way to avoid such situations or being a scapegoat? Should I:

1. Specialise more narrowly, and market myself specifically as, say an ML Engineer, to avoid being generalised to an all-purpose data hire?

2. Only accept roles with a clear team placement, and walk away from "bridge" or floating roles without structural backing?

3. Broaden my skillset, eg. into analytics, if end-to-end ownership (modelling → deployment → metrics, for ML systems) is what the market now expects?

4. Adapt to the current need of the team/company, accepting it's a startup culture, and getting better at navigating the politics?

5. Something else

(If it's 4, I would love some tips on handling/avoiding politics)

TIA!

PS: Based on all the comments, I'm realising that founding engineer roles for high visibility projects is what is the main pattern here that's not suited for me. But even if it's not advertised in the job description, I would love to know how to either not end up in that position after joining, or be able to survive in it.