So one thing to note here is that typically a pilot gets two roles for the price of one (which is why it is often seen as the most mentally taxing of the jobs on the ship), you are also typically a captain as well as a pilot.
Lots of people have given you good piloting advice here so I wont bother to go into detail on that (besides I'm a mediocre pilot). There is some good captaining advice here too, but I'm just going to throw some thoughts in the mix.
You could serve under an engi or gunner captain if you just want to practice your flying. This isn't a terrible idea as far as practice goes but it is a temporary measure while you learn to fly in combat conditions (you should fly every ship you plan to take out in the blast yard first to get an idea of their capabilities, but you will really only learn what they can do when people are shooting at you at the same time). The reason it is temporary is that the captain has to act as an information conduit between ships and the crew and makes most of the strategic and tactical decisions; the pilot is in the best position to implement those decisions immediately. Putting an engi or gunner in that role will almost always add time between making a decision and implementing it and that is costly.
Captaining is one of those things that is full of subjective judgements and lots of people will have lots of ideas about how to do it, so I'm not going to say what you should do, I'm going to tell you some of the things I try (and often fail) to do and why and you can decide for yourself it will work for you.
This isn't an actual military. You cant court martial your crew and you have no authority. If I want my orders (although I rarely give orders as such, "let's go say hi to that Pyramidion" isn't much of an order) followed I find it is best to convince folks to follow them by showing them it gets them something they want (be that a fun experience, winning matches, playing with the toys they want to play with). If you get to know your crew, get to know what they are after and try to provide them with it you'll find folks want to fly with you and will do what you say under pressure.
No player is perfect, and most crews don't expect you to be. Failure to acknowledge your mistakes (or worse blaming your mistakes on your crew) wont win you any friends however. When you screw up, admit it. Don't linger on it, don't look for sympathy either, just say "I did X wrong, in future I will try to do Y" and move on. By admitting your mistakes you make it clear to your crew you know there is a problem, and by saying how you will do things differently you show them that you are learning and will avoid (as much as possible) similar mistakes in the future.
Any plan is often better than no plan. If no one is taking charge then ships will be poorly co-ordinated and will often be picked off one by one. If no one is leading I will often just step up and do it. Let's say the ideal ship to target is X, and you tell your ally to join you attacking Y. This is usually still better than you attacking Y and them attacking X and failing to focus fire. If the other captain is more experienced or seems to have better situational awareness I let them call the shots, but if no one steps up, odds are pretty good you will only make the situation better by taking charge.
If a match is going to be hard I find it beneficial to make it clear to crew (especially inexperienced crew) that this is the case. We often seek validation in others opinions of us and I don't want to leave people with the impression I think they suck. If your ally has a massive pile of derp, the enemy is two experienced captains and that gunner you know never misses, meanwhile you have a couple of level threes who you are still teaching chem cycles then setting expectations of victory and glory is foolhardy. I try to make the standard on my ship fighting hard and never giving up, not winning constantly.
I try to make sure I know something about what is required of my crew in the roles I'm assigning. Don't have to be good at it, just know what being good means. You are going to have to teach powder monkeys, and you may as well make the best of that. Since you have some experience in other roles this shouldn't be a problem (although knowing something and knowing how to teach it are two entirely different things).
Have fun and happy flying.
