Koen received an M.Sc. in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in 1988 and a Ph.D. in computer science from the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1993. Subsequently, he participated as a post-doctorate researcher in two large projects: 1) the ORCA project (1993-1997) targeting parallel computing on large workstation clusters, and 2) the Ubicom project (1998-2002), a multidisciplinary research program specifying and developing wearable systems for mobile multimedia communications.

In 2001 Koen Langendoen joined the Parallel and Distributed Systems group at Delft University of Technology as an assistant professor of computer science. Since then he has established a research group in the area of Wireless Sensor Networks working on localization algorithms, MAC protocols, and various pilot applications. In 2004, Koen Langendoen was promoted to associate professor, and in 2008 he was appointed as full professor of the Embedded Software chair with the Computer Science department.