Previously, he directed one of DARPA’s technical offices, where he oversaw nation-scale scientific and engineering research in cybersecurity, data analysis, and artificial intelligence.

In 1991, the Cambridge University Press published his thesis, Projection Factorizations in Partial Evaluation, after it won the British Computer Society's distinguished dissertation prize.

[6] Their papers on unboxed values[7] and removal of intermediate data structures[8] addressed many of the efficiency challenges inherent in lazy evaluation.

[9][14] While at DARPA, Launchbury led programs in homomorphic cryptography (PROCEED), cybersecurity for vehicles and other embedded systems (HACMS), and data privacy (Brandeis).

[17] Launchbury published a theological perspective on the Moral Exemplar interpretation of the doctrine of atonement, entitled Change Us, Not God: Biblical Meditations on the Death of Jesus.