Following two years in Durham and Oxford (1983–85) he returned to Germany, where he chiefly worked freelance in Cologne for Deutsche Welle television and in publishing (1985–2002).
Most of his work as translator, both of German literature, including works by W. G. Sebald, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elfriede Jelinek, and Jakob Wassermann, and of art criticism, belongs to these years, and he was general editor of the Könemann literature classics series.
Since 2002 Hulse has taught poetry and comparative literature at the University of Warwick, where in 2007 he established The Warwick Review, a quarterly magazine of international writing, of which Sean O'Brien wrote: "in scope and seriousness it offers a useful model for a contemporary literary-cultural magazine [...] Curiosity, imagination and readiness to encounter the unfamiliar are qualities The Warwick Review asks of the reader, and in turn does much to embody" (Times Literary Supplement, 30 October 2009).
In 2007 he co-organized with Warwick colleague Eileen John a major international conference on poetry and philosophy at which the guest poets were Geoffrey Hill (UK); Jorie Graham, Susan Stewart and John Koethe (US); Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky (Canada); and Robert Gray and Kevin Hart (Australia).
He has held residential fellowships at Hawthornden Castle, Scotland (twice); the Château de Lavigny, Switzerland; and the European Translators' College, Straelen, Germany.