Digital Forensics Examiner: Extracts evidence from phones, computers, and cloud accounts. Typical pay $90k.
Forensic Anthropologist: Studies skeletal remains to identify people and determine what happened to them. Typical pay $85k.
Forensic Document Examiner: Examines handwriting, signatures, ink, and paper to detect forgeries. Typical pay $75k.
Bloodstain Pattern Analyst: Studies the shape and pattern of blood at a scene to reconstruct what happened. Typical pay $72k.
Medicolegal Death Investigator: Goes to death scenes for the medical examiner to gather information and examine the body. Typical pay $60k.
Forensic Artist: Draws suspect sketches from witness descriptions and reconstructs faces of unidentified people. Typical pay $65k.
Forensic Video Analyst: Recovers and enhances surveillance and phone video to use as evidence. Typical pay $72k.
Forensic Entomologist: Uses insects found on bodies to estimate time of death. Typical pay $90k.
Polygraph Examiner: Gives polygraph tests that measure body responses during questioning. Typical pay $68k.
Investigative Genetic Genealogist: Uses DNA databases and family trees to identify suspects in cold cases and to name unidentified human remains. Typical pay $85k.
Trace Evidence Examiner: Analyzes tiny bits of evidence like hair, fibers, paint chips, glass, and gunshot residue. Typical pay $72k.
Coroner: An elected or appointed county official who investigates sudden and suspicious deaths and decides the official cause and manner of death. Typical pay $70k.
CODIS Administrator: Runs a state's DNA database, uploading crime-scene and offender DNA profiles and confirming 'hits' that point to suspects or link crimes. Typical pay $90k.
Breath Alcohol Technical Supervisor: Maintains and certifies the breath-test machines police use in drunk-driving cases, and testifies in court that they were accurate. Typical pay $72k.
Forensic Quality Manager: Makes sure a crime lab's results can be trusted, running audits, error investigations and accreditation so evidence holds up in court. Typical pay $95k.
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Evidence & Property Technician: Stores and tracks every piece of evidence a police department collects. Typical pay $48k.
Autopsy Technician: Assists the medical examiner during autopsies and cares for bodies in the morgue. Typical pay $46k.
Fingerprint Technician (AFIS): Takes, classifies, and searches fingerprints in the computerized Automated Fingerprint Identification System to identify people. Typical pay $48k.
Crime Scene Cleaner: Cleans and decontaminates homes and businesses after deaths, violent crimes, and biohazard incidents. Typical pay $45k.
Forensic Photographer: Photographs crime scenes, evidence, autopsies, and injuries in exact detail for investigations and court. Typical pay $54k.
NIBIN Ballistic Imaging Technician: Photographs spent bullet casings from shootings into a national database that links guns used in different crimes, often within a day. Typical pay $54k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.