Samad worked as a national and international civil servant, economist, and human rights activist.

[4][5] From 1995 to 1997, Samad was president of the Bangladesh Civil Service Association[6] and from 1996 to 1997, the permanent secretary to the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources.

Samad also played a crucial role in reaching the historic 1996 Ganges Water Sharing Treaty with India and the 1997 peace agreement with Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samity (PCJSS) that saw the end of the nearly two decades long unrest in the troubled hill region.

Samad carried out evaluations of many inter-regional agencies, United Nations funded programmes and projects.

He was a member of the technical committee of the global programme on comparative poverty research, funded by the International Social Science Council (ISSC), Paris.