After drafting his dissertation on Ghanaian constitutional politics in the wake of the wall of the Iron Curtain, Stefan Skupien worked as a program manager in the presidencies of Humboldt-Universität and Freie Universität. Motivated by issues related to the internationalization strategies of German universities, he worked as a project manager on African-European research relations in tropical medicine and engineering at the Berlin Social Science Center from 2016 to 2019. The study included interview trips to eight African countries and a research stay at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), where Stefan Skupien is now an associated researcher. As a fellow of the Wikimedia Open Science Fellows Program, in 2019/20, he developed an open-source database and met an inspiring network of open science enthusiasts.

Since June 2020, Stefan Skupien has been working as scientific coordinator in Objective 3 of the Berlin University Alliance, combining his experience in research management, international science studies, and open science.