Jörg Behler received his diploma in Chemistry in 2000 at University of Dortmund. He then completed his PhD with Karsten Reuter and Matthias Scheffler at the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck-Society with a thesis entitled "Dissociation of Oxygen Molecules on the Al(111) Surface". 

He went on to a postdoc at ETH Zurich with Michele Parrinello, before being hired at Ruhr-University Bochum first as a research associate, then head of a junior research group. 

In 2017, he moved to the University of Göttingen as a Full Professor for Theoretical Chemistry. Recently, he accepted an offer to become a Full Professor for Theoretical Chemistry at Ruhr-University Bochum in combination with a professorship at the newly established Research Center Chemical Sciences and Sustainability of the Research Alliance Ruhr where he will start in November 2022.