Jeff has a background in meteorology and glaciology. He was a glaciologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, wintering at Casey in 1977 and the 79/80 austral summer. His prime role as a glaciologist was obtaining ice cores from the Law Dome for subsequent Oxygen 16/18 analysis for indications of temperature change. In 1980, Jeff joined the Australian Bureau of Meteorology where he worked until late 2007, when he joined the World Meteorological Organisation Secretariat in Genève as the Director of the Education and Training Programme.

At the Bureau, Jeff worked as a junior forecaster and then moved into the training area with three summers in the Antarctic providing onsite meteorological support for shipping as well as land and sea operations. Whilst working at the Bureau, Jeff was a member of a number of WMO Expert Teams in Education and Training as well as the Utilisation of Satellite Data. He completed an MSc on wind flow around the Law Dome in 1990. Jeff was at WMO for eight and a half years and led the update of the WMO Technical Regulations related to Education and Training and the introduction of competency based training particularly for aviation, marine related services, as well as for education and training.

Following his retirement in late 2016, Jeff returned to Australia. In 2018, he was invited to assist the World Weather Research Project on Polar Prediction, initially for the WWRP Office and then directly with the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) International Coordination Office (ICO), which was based at the Alfred Wegner Institute in Bremen, Germany. PPP was formally completed at the of 2022 and Jeff finished work with the ICO midway through 2023 before commencing work with MET Norway in support of the PCAPS ICO in December 2023.