Fiction Books

Check out the Culture series by Iain M Banks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) and follow up book are good.

Protector by Larry Niven... I promise you it fits your requirements. But I don't want to spoil it

I love the short story The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove. There's of course the alien invasion trope, where aliens are space conquistadors pillaging the earth with their extra-terrestrial powers, and its complement, the Star Trek trope, where humans are culturally and technologically superior secular humanists descended to a backwards planet. And then there's this story.

The whole Hainish Cycle from Ursula K Le Guin may fit here, in the sense that all human-like 'aliens' are the offsprings of the colonies planted by a primitive human civilization.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

The Bobiverse Series involves humanity (in a fashion) exploring the stars and occasionally meeting less advanced species.

You might be a fan of the HFY Trope (aka Humanity; Fuck Yeah)

This isn’t quite what you’re looking for, but it may scratch the itch: Deathworlders. Effectively, humans aren’t the most technically advanced at all, but our evolution (because we live on a “death world” or a normally “inhospital planet”) has lead us to be effectively unstoppable in comparison to all other intelligent life forms. It’s definitely a cool take, IMO. Read until you get to the hockey game before making your decision.

The story is free: https://deathworlders.com/

This “genre” is called “humans fuck yea” for reference.

Tagging @rikudou@lemmings.world for visibility

H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy series. It's been a long while since I read them, but I remember them being good.

Brandon Sanderson's Starsight series might be worth a look in. It seems like the Humans are not advanced at the start, but there's more to it than that.

I'm sure you'll be familiar with Star Trek and Star Wars universes they both have a lot of books. I haven't read any Trek novels, but on the Star Wars front, I'd recommend the XWing Series.

John Scalzi's Old Man's War should also be on this list. A fantastic little series.

Hmm, looking back at these, they're all pretty light reading/a little YA. I wonder whether there's some harder Science Fiction that'd fit these criteria that I haven't thought of?

Stargate SG-1 The power of a FN P90 in the hands of NATO forces trumps any so called advanced alien civilization

!Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary!