He spent much of his career as a scientist at the United States National Institutes of Health, where he rose to become the chief of the Laboratory on the Biology of Viruses; after retiring from the NIH in 1986, he worked at Georgetown University and later at the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center.
[3] He spent most of his NIH tenure at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
While there he served as co-founding editor of the Journal of Virology, launched in 1967 under the leadership of Salzman, Lloyd M. Kozloff, and founding editor-in-chief Robert R.
[3] Salzman retired from the NIH in 1986 and moved to Georgetown University School of Medicine to head a laboratory of molecular retrovirology there.
In 1994 he moved again to the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center and was serving as a laboratory head there at the time of his death.