José Proença is currently a postdoc at CISTER, ISEP, Portugal, working on formal models for component-based systems.

Until January 2019 he worked in HASLab, University of Minho, working with Luís Barbosa, and was affiliated with Distrinet, KU Leuven, until January 2016, working mainly with Danny Hughes and Dave Clarke.

His work has been mainly on coordination of distributed components, often associated to the Reo coordination language, and on formal approaches to software product line engineering. More recently he has been working with binding and component models for embedded devices in the context of the LooCI middleware and micro PnP (now part of VersaSense), and in the context of the VirtuosoNext RTOS.

Before he graduated in University of Minho, Portugal, for a 5 year degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He studied abroad for 6 months as an Erasmus student in Bristol University, UK. He defended his PhD in Leiden University in May 2011, for his work carried in CWI, Amsterdam, in the group for Foundations of Software Engineering.