NJ Civil Service Navigator

Principal Staff Officer Family

Career series with 3 positions across 3 levels

In New Jersey civil service, Principal Staff Officer names a 3-level progression covering 3 distinct titles.

Entry is typically through Principal Staff Officer 3, advancing through the ladder toward Principal Staff Officer 1. Pay across the family spans $79,844 to $148,187, around the 78th percentile of all civil service job families by top pay. State payroll records show 20 people across the family's titles, most concentrated at Military and Veterans Affairs.

Principal Staff Officer supervises titles such as Conservation Police Officer and Sheriff's Officer.

3
Positions
3
Career Levels
Salary Range: $79,844 - $148,187/year

Positions in This Family

What the Principal Staff Officer family covers

Principal Staff Officer covers 3 title codes arranged into 3 levels of responsibility. Every title in it is a state title, so the employer is a state department, commission or authority rather than a county or municipality.

Office support is where New Jersey's classification plan is at its most granular. Typing, transcription, stenography, records, reception and general clerical duties each became their own series, and each series then split into state and local versions, which is why the catalog holds so many near-identical clerical codes. For applicants this granularity is mostly good news: it means a lot of separate eligible lists, most of them asking for a high school diploma and no experience, and it makes clerical work the most common way people enter the system and then transfer sideways.

The ladder, ordered by pay

The Principal Staff Officer rungs, listed from the best paid down. Note that the numbers in these titles do not run in pay order. In this family a lower number sits higher on the ladder, which is a New Jersey convention that catches people out when they read a title list top to bottom.

The distance from the bottom of Principal Staff Officer 3 to the top of Principal Staff Officer 1 is $68,343, an increase of about 86% over the entry minimum.

What each title does

Reading the definitions side by side is the quickest way to see what changes as you move through the family.

Requirements across the family

Across the 3 titles we have parsed, the education requirements read as a bachelor's degree on 3 of them. Stated experience runs from 3 years at the lowest rung to 5 at the highest, which is the main thing separating one level from the next.

On how the jobs are filled: 3 are unclassified, which means appointment at the employer's discretion and salary set individually.

Who actually employs these titles

20 people appear on the state payroll under 2 of these titles, at 2 agencies. Military and Veterans Affairs alone accounts for about 70% of them.

  • Military and Veterans Affairs — 14 employees
  • Unknown — 6 employees

Median actual pay varies across the family, from $113,264 for Principal Staff Officer 3 up to $115,705 for Principal Staff Officer 2. Those are medians of what people are really paid, not schedule minimums and maximums.

State payroll only, deduplicated by payroll title; local employers file separately, so a family with local codes looks smaller here than it is. How this is counted.

How the pay is set

The family is split across 2 salary schedules (A-P-R-S and M-Represented), so two titles that look adjacent can be paid from different tables with different step structures. More than one union has members in this family: CWA and IBEW.

Where these jobs exist

Hiring for this family runs through state service. Departments, commissions and boards fill these titles from eligible lists built by the Civil Service Commission, so the route in is an announcement and a filing deadline rather than a posting you apply to directly. What state jurisdiction means, and a breakdown of who employs what.

Related titles elsewhere in the plan

Other classifications built on the same terms as Principal Staff Officer. Worth checking if this family has no current opening.

Families next to this one

New Jersey's classification plan links families by shared terminology and by the routes people actually take between them. These sit closest to Principal Staff Officer.

Common questions about Principal Staff Officer jobs

How many separate Principal Staff Officer classifications does New Jersey have?

The Principal Staff Officer family holds 3 title codes arranged across 3 levels. Each code is a separate classification with its own published specification, requirements and salary treatment.

How much is a Principal Staff Officer paid?

Published salary data for this family runs from $79,844 at the bottom of Principal Staff Officer 3 to $148,187 at the top of Principal Staff Officer 1. Those are schedule figures. Where the title appears on the state payroll, actual median pay is listed on the page above.

Is there a civil service test for Principal Staff Officer?

Mostly no. 3 of the 3 titles here are unclassified, so appointment is at the employer's discretion rather than from an eligible list, and salary is set individually rather than by a published step. That also makes cross-agency salary comparison less reliable for these titles.

What are the requirements to become a Principal Staff Officer?

The most common education requirement in this family is a bachelor's degree, named on 3 of the 3 titles. Stated experience ranges from 3 to 5 years depending on the rung. Read the individual specification for the exact wording, including any experience substitution.

Which agencies employ Principal Staff Officer staff?

State payroll records show 20 people in this family across 2 agencies, with Military and Veterans Affairs the largest at 14. Local government employers are not covered by that extract.

Is Principal Staff Officer 1 higher or lower than Principal Staff Officer 3?

In this family the lower number is the more senior title. New Jersey's level numbering does not run in pay order, and reading the titles by number alone will give you the ladder upside down. The list above is sorted by what each title actually pays.