Staff sergeant
enlisted rank

Staff sergeant is a rank of non-commissioned officer used in the armed forces of many countries. It is also a police rank in some police services.
History of title
In origin, certain senior sergeants were assigned to administrative, supervisory, or other specialist duties as part of the staff of a British Army regiment. As such they held seniority over sergeants who were members of a battalion or company, and were paid correspondingly increased wages. Their seniority was indicated by a crown worn above the three sergeant's stripes on their uniform rank markings.
Military rank
Australia
In the Australian Army and Cadets, the rank of staff sergeant was being phased out from about 2015. It was usually held by the company quartermaster sergeant or the holders of other administrative roles. Staff sergeants are always addressed as "Staff Sergeant" or "Staff", never as "Sergeant", as it degrades their rank. "Chief" is another nickname though this is only used for the company chief clerk (in some instances the chief clerk role can be filled by another non-commissioned rank (but not warrant officer) and still be referred to as "Chief"). A staff sergeant ranks above sergeant and below warrant officer class 2.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1337825. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Staff sergeant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.