Before becoming a cosmonaut, he worked as a design engineer at the Energia corporation, contributing to the development and operations of the Progress MS cargo spacecraft.

He first became interested in aviation when he discovered model planes, and by high school had decided to pursue a future as an aerospace engineer.

He subsequently applied to join the Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps in June 2017 and received medical clearance in November of the same year.

In August 2019, the candidates underwent diving training at the Noginsk Rescue Center of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

[3][7] In May 2023, information appeared on the website of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center that Gorbunov was being trained as a backup cosmonaut for Alexander Grebenkin, a member of the main crew of the American manned spacecraft Crew Dragon's SpaceX Crew-8 mission, which is scheduled to be launched to the ISS in early February 2024.

Later, he was selected for SpaceX Crew-9 mission in January 2024 under the Dragon-Soyuz cross-crew flight system to allow the station to be continuously manned, in case, either of the two crewed vehicles runs into issues.

[9] NASA astronaut Nick Hague, a spaceflight veteran and one of the few individuals to have survived a launch abort aboard Soyuz MS-10 was selected as the commander of the mission.

While Gorbunov is a qualified engineer and holds the rank of test cosmonaut (making him eligible to be a Soyuz commander), he had only previously received basic training on the Dragon in his role as a mission specialist.