Julia is Professor in Computational Imaging and AI in Medicine (TUM Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professorship) at Technical University of Munich, and Helmholtz Distinguished Professor at Helmholtz Center Munich for Health and Environment. She retains a part-time appointment at King's College London in her current academic role.

Julia Schnabel joined King's College London in July 2015 as Chair in Computational Imaging at the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, where until 2020 she has been the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Smart Medical Imaging, jointly run by King’s College London and Imperial College London. From 2018-21 she has been School Lead for Research & Impact, and Deputy Director of the NIHR funded Medtech and In vitro diagnostic Co-operative (MIC) in Cardiovascular Diseases.

Julia is elected member of the MICCAI Society Board (2017-21) and the IEEE EMBS Administrative Committee (2017-19, re-elected 2020-22). She has also been a member of the Inria Science Board (2017-20) and the EPSRC Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) in Healthcare Technology (2018-21). In 2018 Julia was elected MICCAI Fellow "For contributions to multiple areas of medical image computing, and for distinguished service to the MICCAI conference and Society", and in 2019 she became Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). In 2021 Julia was elected Fellow of IEEE "For contributions to medical image computing", and in 2024 the German Röntgen Society awarded her the prestigious Alfred-Breit prize "For her outstanding achievements in the field of medical imaging".