He completed Post-Doctoral research at the National University of Singapore and subsequently moved to the United Kingdom in 2001 to work as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham.
The following year, he began teaching at Northumbria University as a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to a Reader in 2006.
In 2007, he moved to Surrey Space Center at the University of Surrey, and from 2013 to 2022, worked at the University of Kent as a Professor and Chair of RF and Microwave Engineering.
Since Sep 2022, he joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, as a Professor and the Director of Center for intelligent Electromagnetic Systems.
[1][2] Since 2023, Prof. Gao serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.