Kiss was born in Buda on 19 March 1748, into a family of military officers that obtained noble status in 1681 with the last name Kissarosi.

Soon after, in the 1770s, he abandoned military service to become a civil engineer working for the Hofkammer, the main financial institution of the Habsburg monarchy.

[1] However, a serious water supply problem arose and threatened the migration efforts; the southern edge of the Telek Highlands were covered with morasses, marshes and bogs, and east of Vrbas lay the Crna bara (English: "black pools"), a water catchment area.

In 1787, as soon as the Sivac - Vrbas channel was completed, he analyzed the terrain between the Danube and Tisza, and determined a 7.27 meter elevation difference between the two rivers.

In 1788, the Hofkammer appointed Kiss as the lead engineer for Bačka (Dirigirender Hofkammer—Ingenieur), with responsibilities including supplying lumber to the military and facilitating navigation through the region’s waterways.

The Kiss brothers submitted an application to Leopold II, which in one part stated: “The undersigned two brothers, guided by the aspiration to benefit their homeland take the courage to suggest to your royal highness most humbly the connection of the Danube near Monoštor with the Tisa near Bačko Gradište by the means of a navigable channel [...] The situation and plan of the level, accurately determined on their expense, show the possibility of creating such a channel, as well as its great possible benefit on commerce, factories, manufactures [...] and the benefit on the land quality in such a beautiful province.”[1]In 1792, they received the license to build the canal and formed an association with 800,000 forints of seed capital.

Although the monarchy had promised 4000 soldiers for the project, only two regiments were sent, which constructed barracks and scanned the transverse profiles of the foundation pits for the lock and channel sections.

Freshly built slopes frequently collapsed, and substantial groundwater flow into the work pits caused further problems.

The stimulus that commerce, manufacturing and navigation received influenced the increased development of nearby settlements such as Apatin, Sombor, Crvenka, Kula, Vrbas, Srbobran and Bečej.

An important function of the channel was also melioration, especially east of Vrbas, as much of the wide, marshy terrain around the banks of the canal was drained and turned into fertile soil.

Kiss’ notebook, titled Stammbuch and written in German and Latin contains entries about his family and work, along with sketches of famous historical figures such as Maria Theresia, Joseph II, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

On the last page, he had sketched a desired gravestone and epitaph which reads: Here lays József Kiss, a Hungarian noble.