Arlindo Oliveira was born in Angola and lived in Mozambique, Portugal, Switzerland, United States (California and Massachusetts), and Japan. He has a degree from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.

He is Distinguished Full Professor at IST, President of the Instituto de Sistemas e Computadores (INESC), non-executive director of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, researcher at INESC-ID, member of the National Council for Science, Technology and Innovation and member of the Advisory Board of the Science and Technology Panel of the European Parliament (STOA).

He has published three books, translated into several languages, and hundreds of scientific and scientific dissemination articles.

He was director of several companies and institutions and president of IST, the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence and INESC-ID. He was director of the Portuguese node of the European Biological Data Network ELIXIR, visiting professor at MIT and the University of Tokyo, and researcher at CERN, INESC, Cadence Research Laboratories and the Electronics Research Lab at Berkeley.

He is a member of the Academy of Engineering and a senior member of the IEEE. He has received several awards and distinctions, including the Technical University of Lisbon / Santander award for excellence in research in 2009.