Following her BA in Social Science from Liverpool University, Enid Mumford spent time working in industry, first as personnel manager for an aircraft factory and later as production manager for an alarm clock manufacturer. The first job was important for her career as an academic, since it involved looking after personnel policy and industrial relations strategy for a large number of women staff. The second job also proved invaluable, as she was running a production department, providing a level of practical experience that is unusual among academics.

Professor Mumford then joined the Faculty of Social Science at Liverpool University, where she carried out research in industrial relations in the Liverpool docks and in the North West coal industry. In order to collect information for the dock research, she became a canteen assistant in the canteens used by the stevedores for meals. Each canteen was in a different part of the waterfront estate and served dockers working on different shipping lines and with different cargoes. The coal mine research required her to spend many months underground talking to miners at the coal face.

She then spent a year at the University of Michigan, where she worked for the University Bureau of Public Health Economics and studied Michigan medical facilities while her husband took a higher degree in dental science. On returning to England, she joined the newly formed Manchester Business School (MBS), where she undertook many research contracts investigating the human and organisational impacts of computer based systems. During this time she became Professor of Organisational Behaviour and Director of the Computer and Work Design Research Unit (CAWDRU). She also directed the MBA programme for four years.

While at MBS, Professor Mumford developed a close relationship with the Tavistock Institute and became interested in their democratic socio-technical approach to work organisation. Since then, she has applied this approach to the design and implementation of computer-based systems and information technology. One of her largest socio-technical projects was with the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Boston. In the 1970's she became a member of the International Quality of Working Life Group, the goal of which was to spread the socio-technical message around the world. She later became a council member of the Tavistock Institute and is also a member of the US Socio-technical Round Table.

In 1983, she won the American Warnier Prize for her contributions to information science.

In 1996, she was given an Honorary Doctorate by the university of Jyvaskyla in Finland.

In 1999, she was the only British recipient of a Leo Lifetime Achievement Award for Exceptional Achievement in Information Systems, one of only four in that year. Leo Awards are given by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

She is now an Emeritus Professor of Manchester University and a Visiting Fellow at Manchester Business School. She is a companion of the Institute of Personnel Development and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. She is a founder member and ex-chairperson of the BCS Sociotechnical Group.