[3] He is a civil engineer by education and has formerly served three terms as the founding director of the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.

[4][5] He has carried out intensive research and development in the fields of seismic design codes, dynamic of buildings, and post-earthquake studies.

[9] He has served as the president of International Association of Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) from 2014 to 2018.

[10][11] He also served on the engineering and computer science jury for the Infosys Prize from 2019.

[12] Jain earned Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) in 1979,[13] and masters, and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena in 1980 and 1983 respectively.