Josef Urban started his professional career in the central research labs of Siemens in Munich, Germany, gaining practical experience in software development throughout the whole software development cycle. He was involved in a number of software development projects as well as in European funded projects conducting research on advanced communication systems. In 1998, Josef joined the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, acting as project officer in the directorate Information Society. Later, he returned to Siemens where he was active in various management positions at the mobile communication division. Today he is heading the department responsible for the software and security research of NSN. Since July 2012, he is steering committee chairman of NESSI, the European technology platform for research in software, services, and data. He is also member of ACM, IEEE and the German Informatics Society.