Portfolio Analyst at a top-tier AM: Back office or not?

I just received a PA internship position, and was wondering how this position if you would transition into equity or fixed income research, IBD, or S&T full time. I'm asking about transitioning because I am pretty sure this firm does not give out FT offers to undergrads.

Also, if I do manage to get a FT offer for this role and all the research I did about not giving FT offers was wrong, is PA back-office/not as prestigious as a research role for getting an MBA and for eventually becoming a PM? Would you suggest transitioning from being a portfolio analyst to being a research analyst?

Here's the description of the role (at least for the intern):
Provide security, portfolio, and benchmark information to investment managers
Analyze benchmark data and its impact on the portfolio
Review portfolio reports, client presentations, and data requests.
Work together with PMs, researchers, and traders.

After speaking with some PAs and Investments analysts at AM firms, I was under the impression that portfolio analysts act more as a research/trader hybrid, in the sense that he applies the research to make/recommend investment decisions and analyzes the portfolio to make necessary changes, and communicates with traders to execute these changes. It does not seem like a back office role to me, but that was until I started looking up the differences between this role and that of a research analyst.

I've gotten very mixed results about this question when looking at past threads (and there are not many threads about this), so decided I'd post something myself.