I believe the best Americanized/English translation of "Tjänsteman" would be "white-collar worker", which according to Wikipedia is "a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor" instead of officer.
That's it! I was looking for the wording but nothing good came up, but I knew I've heard it before. Thanks, I'll update the text.