Jens graduated as a geologist (Diplom-Geologe, equivalent to BSc + MSc) from RWTH Aachen University, Germany then worked freelance in environmental consultancy until starting a PhD project at the University of Bremen, Germany on Central African Quaternary climate variability .

Jens then successfully applied for a 2-year research grant from the German Research Foundation to reconstruct Late Quaternary North Atlantic sea-surface temperature changes at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA.

In 2006, Jens relocated to the UK as research assistant at Liverpool University where he worked on a number of projects on oceanic iron fertilisation, carbon fluxes and organic matter transformation during export from the sea surface to the sediment. He then moved into terrestrial paleoenvironmental research through his involvement in the international Scientific Collaboration On Past Speciation Conditions in Ohrid (SCOPSCO), having been awarded a grant from the Leverhulme Trust to work on the responses of the terrestrial ecosystem in the Lake Ohrid Basin to climate change.

In 2014, Jens moved to Bristol University, where he first became a teaching assistant and then lecturer in the School of Chemistry before moving to the School of Earth Sciences, teaching environmental geoscience subjects (e.g., Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Geobiology, Analytical Geochemistry).

In 2019/20, Jens worked for the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge University as a senior research assistant to organise social surveys on the socioeconomic impacts of European protected areas before finally joining Teesside University in November 2020.