Johannes Schenk started his professional career at Voestalpine Industrieanlagenbau (now Primetals Technologies Austria) in 1990. He worked as a process and research engineer for ironmaking technologies such as MIDREX, COREX and FINMET. As general manager and vice president of R&D, he was responsible for developing the FINEX process between 1992 and 2007.

Since 2008, he has been a full professor for the Chair of Ferrous Metallurgy at the Montanuniversität Leoben. His research focuses on the primary technology for steel production, i.e. ironmaking and crude steel production. The current topics in the ongoing research projects are related to CO2 lean steel production and circular economy. Since 2015 he is also the Chief Scientific Officer of the Austrian metallurgical competence center K1-MET GmbH.

Johannes Schenk has published over 180 papers in Journals and Conference Proceedings and is the inventor and co-inventor of more than 30 patent families.