Trooper Family
Career series with 2 positions across 2 levels
Trooper is a career-ladder family in New Jersey civil service, with 2 titles spanning 2 levels.
Entry is typically through Trooper 2, advancing through the ladder toward Trooper 1. Pay across the family spans $82,797 to $131,815, around the 61st percentile of all civil service job families by top pay. State payroll records show 1,912 people across the family's titles, most concentrated at Law and Public Safety.
Positions in This Family
What the Trooper family covers
Trooper covers 2 title codes arranged into 2 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.
Sworn and investigative titles sit apart from the rest of civil service. They carry their own salary schedules, their own unions and, in most cases, an academy requirement and a medical and psychological screen on top of the exam. Rank is handled by moving between titles rather than by moving up a range, so the ladder here is a sequence of separate classifications. New Jersey also runs a large civilian investigative service alongside the sworn forces, and those titles follow ordinary competitive rules even though the work overlaps.
The ladder, ordered by pay
The Trooper 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 Trooper 2 to the top of Trooper 1 is $49,018, an increase of about 59% 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.
- Trooper 2: The Civil Service Commission lists this title code but publishes no job specification for it. The classification shown here comes from the official title list, which is the…
- Trooper 1: Under the direction of a Sergeant, Staff Sergeant or other supervisory officer in the Division of State Police, performs various phases of police work, including but not limited…
Requirements across the family
None of the specifications in this family names a degree requirement, which places these titles among the New Jersey positions open to applicants without formal higher education. On how the jobs are filled: 2 are unclassified, which means appointment at the employer's discretion and salary set individually.
Who actually employs these titles
State payroll records show 1,912 people working under 1 of this family's title, spread across 1 agency. Law and Public Safety alone accounts for about 100% of them.
- Law and Public Safety — 1,912 employees
Median actual pay for Trooper 1 is $83,333, which is what people in the title are really paid rather than the published band.
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
Titles in this family are paid on the T salary schedule. See every step in that schedule. Bargaining is handled by STFA. Union contracts and rights are collected here.
Where these jobs exist
These are state titles, hired by New Jersey departments, commissions and boards through the Civil Service Commission's announcement and eligible list process rather than by an ordinary job posting. How state hiring works, and which agencies employ what.
Common questions about Trooper jobs
How many Trooper titles are there in New Jersey civil service?
The Trooper family holds 2 title codes arranged across 2 levels. Each code is a separate classification with its own published specification, requirements and salary treatment.
What does a Trooper earn in New Jersey?
Published salary data for this family runs from $82,797 at the bottom of Trooper 2 to $131,815 at the top of Trooper 1. Those are schedule figures. Where the title appears on the state payroll, actual median pay is listed on the page above.
Do you need to take an exam to become a Trooper?
Mostly no. 2 of the 2 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 qualifications does a Trooper need?
No degree requirement is parsed from the specifications in this family, which puts these titles among the New Jersey civil service jobs reachable without formal higher education.
Which agencies employ Trooper staff?
State payroll records show 1,912 people in this family across 1 agency, with Law and Public Safety the largest at 1,912. Local government employers are not covered by that extract.
Is Trooper 1 higher or lower than Trooper 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.