Traffic Officer

A Traffic Officer patrols and manages the motorway and major A-road network, dealing with broken-down vehicles, debris, collisions and lane closures so traffic keeps moving safely. In England the role sits with National Highways (the government company that runs the strategic road network), with equivalent on-road and control-room roles in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The job splits into on-road officers in liveried patrol vehicles and regional control centre operators who handle calls, CCTV and electronic signs.

Starting salary: £25k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: 2 open now
Main way in: Direct application to advertised Traffic Officer vacancies is…
They usually ask for: No specific degree is required and the subject does not matter

Approximate graduate salary

Typically around £25,000–£32,000 to start for on-road and control centre roles, though this varies by employer, region and - importantly - by shift allowances and overtime, which can add a significant amount on top of base pay. Graduate schemes in the wider highways sector tend to sit in a similar or slightly higher range.

What you'd actually do

Patrolling an allocated stretch of motorway or trunk road in a marked vehicle, usually crewed in pairs, looking for hazards, debris, stopped vehicles and poorly secured loads
Attending incidents to make the scene safe - setting out cones and signs, closing or coning off lanes, and moving broken-down vehicles to a safer place so recovery can happen
Working alongside police, fire, ambulance and recovery operators at collisions, and taking over scene management once the emergency services have finished so the road can reopen
Rolling roadblocks and lane closures to clear spillages, remove dead animals or allow maintenance crews to work safely

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In a regional control centre: answering emergency roadside telephone and 999-transferred calls, monitoring CCTV, setting messages and speed limits on overhead gantry signs, and dispatching on-road crews
Writing up incident records and logs after each job, which feed into traffic data and sometimes into police or insurance processes
Shift handovers, vehicle and equipment checks at the start of a shift, and regular refresher training on incident command, first aid and working at the roadside

How graduates get in

Direct application to advertised Traffic Officer vacancies is by far the most common route - these are recruited in regional batches rather than through a graduate scheme, and are open to applicants with or without a degree
Control centre operator roles are recruited separately and are a common way in; some people move from the control room to on-road work or vice versa
Coming from a related background - police, fire and rescue, armed forces, vehicle recovery, highways maintenance or driving-based work - is very common and often valued more than academic qualifications
National Highways and the devolved equivalents run graduate and apprenticeship programmes in areas such as traffic management, engineering, operations and project delivery; these are a different entry point and lead to office or technical roles rather than roadside patrol, though they are a sensible route if the wider organisation interests you

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Agency or contractor traffic management work (setting out cones and signage for roadworks) is a related but separate job, and experience there can help an application
Unusual but possible: moving across from a local authority network management or urban traffic control team

What employers ask for

No specific degree is required and the subject does not matter - this is not a graduate-scheme role, and a degree gives no formal advantage. Employers generally look for a reasonable standard of literacy and numeracy, often expressed as GCSE-level English and maths or equivalent
A full UK driving licence is essential, usually with limits on penalty points. Some roles require or expect a category C1 (medium goods) entitlement, or you may be trained to it after joining - this varies by employer and vehicle type
You will need to pass a medical and eyesight check, and in most cases a criminal record and security clearance check, because of the emergency-services interface
Willingness to work a rotating shift pattern covering nights, weekends and bank holidays is effectively a hard requirement for on-road and control centre roles

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Training is delivered after appointment: an initial residential or classroom course covering incident management, the legal powers of a traffic officer, first aid and safe working at the roadside, followed by a period of supervised on-road work
Control centre roles place more weight on call handling, keyboard accuracy and the ability to manage several screens and radio channels at once

Skills that matter

Staying calm and decisive at unpleasant scenes

You will attend serious collisions and will sometimes be first on scene, so you need to act methodically rather than freeze or rush.

Spatial and risk judgement at speed

Deciding where to park a patrol vehicle, how to cone a closure and when it is safe to step out onto a live carriageway is the core safety skill of the job.

Clear radio and verbal communication under pressure

You pass information between the control centre, police and recovery operators, and you give instructions to distressed or angry drivers who have just broken down.

Working as a crewed pair and within a command structure

Most patrols are two-person and incidents run on a defined chain of command, so following and giving instructions reliably matters more than individual initiative.

Accurate written logging

Incident records can be used by police, insurers and coroners, so vague or inconsistent notes cause real problems later.

De-escalation and customer handling

A large share of contacts are with members of the public who are stranded, late, frightened or hostile, and you have limited powers to compel cooperation.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Start as a Traffic Officer (on-road) or control centre operator, with an initial probationary period and structured on-the-job training before working unsupervised
Move to Team Manager or shift supervisor, running a crew or a control room watch - this is the most common first promotion, though the timeline varies widely depending on vacancies in your region
From there into operations management, incident command, network or regional control roles, or specialist posts such as training, incident investigation and performance analysis
Sideways moves into the wider highways organisation are common and are where a degree can genuinely help - traffic management planning, scheme delivery, road safety, customer operations or policy roles
Some officers move out to police roads policing units, local authority network management teams, or private traffic management and recovery firms

What people get wrong

“Traffic officers are a kind of police officer and can issue fines or tickets.”

They are not police and do not issue penalty notices or enforce speeding. They have specific legal powers on the strategic road network - mainly to stop and direct traffic and close lanes or roads - and they call in police for anything enforcement-related.

“It is mostly about moving cones and standing around waiting for traffic to clear.”

A large part of the job is incident management: making a scene safe, coordinating recovery and emergency services, and making judgement calls about when to reopen a road. Officers also attend fatal and serious collisions, so the emotional side of the work is real.

“It is a graduate scheme with a structured fast track.”

On-road and control centre roles are recruited as operational jobs open to all backgrounds, with training provided after you join. Graduates who want a structured programme should look at the separate graduate and apprenticeship routes in the same organisations, which lead to engineering, project and operations roles instead.

“It is a standard office-hours job.”

The network runs continuously, so it is shift work including nights, weekends and bank holidays, outdoors in all weathers for on-road officers.

Where this varies

The job differs by nation and by employer. In England it is run by National Highways across regional outstations and control centres; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own trunk road operating arrangements, often delivered through contracted operating companies, so job titles, powers and recruitment differ. On-road and control centre work are genuinely different jobs despite sharing a function - one is outdoor, physical and shift-based at the roadside, the other is screen- and radio-based. Local authority roles using similar titles (urban traffic control, network management, civil enforcement) are separate from the motorway role and involve different powers and duties; civil enforcement officers, for instance, do issue parking penalties, which traffic officers on the motorway network do not.

See all 2 live Traffic Officer jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.