Wolf majored in both geology and computer science at Queens College, City University of New York, where he received his BA degree in 1979.

Wolf remained at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for two years as a visiting assistant professor and research scientist working on the Arcadia Project, which was laying the technical and theoretical foundations for tool-rich, geographically distributed software development environments.

[citation needed] Wolf began his academic career when he moved to the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Computer Science as an assistant professor in 1992.

After promotion to associate and then full professor, he was named to the Charles V. Schelke Endowed Chair in the College of Engineering in 2005.

In July 2016, he became the sixth dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.