This is exactly my experience. I like to think I'm a decent thinker. I've spent the past 6 months basically in constant burnout, started smoking again and am up to a pack a day now, because my job is "we're going to tell you that you have ownership over this perimeter, and then give you basically zero leeway in how to do things. You have to do it this way because that's what the senior architect with the hard-on for every new DevOps tool has decided. You thought that db migration could be done with just a simple script and modifying a few API endpoints? Lol No, we're using Temporal. Wait,why do you keep telling us you want to quit and go back to doing maths research?"

Being given responsibility without the authority is an increasing trend in this industry.

Why do companies hire self-directed SMEs for six figures, only to put them in a micromanagement box and override their advice?

I would argue if you are actually good at reasoning, you can easily optimize and make the map lookup tasks efficient and automated. Unless the environment doesn't allow you to do so.