In 1985 he founded and ran a software company, Dancing Flame, which adapted the Aegis Animator to the Atari ST,[2] and created Cyber Paint[3] for that machine.

Later he developed a similar program, the Autodesk Animator for PC compatibles, where the image compression improved to the point it could play off of hard disk, and one could paint using "inks" that performed algorithmic transformations such as smoothing, transparency, and tiled patterns.

His efforts were motivated by the research needs of himself and his colleagues, but also out of concern that the data might be made proprietary via patents by Celera Genomics.

Kent continues to work at UCSC primarily on web tools to help understand the human genome.

He helps maintain and upgrade the browser, and has worked on comparative genomics,[12] Parasol, a job control management software for the UCSC kilocluster, and the ENCODE Project.