Natalia is full professor of software engineering with the Computing School at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) since 1997.

She held a FiDiPro (Finland Distinguish Professor) research grant at University of Oulu from January 2013 to June 2018. Natalia was the Director of the UPM MSc in Software Engineering from 1992 to 2002 and the coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus European Master on SE (whith the participation of the University of Bolzano, the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Blekinge) from 2007 to 2012.

Natalia will be General Chair for ICSE 2021 to be held in Madrid. She has served in several Program Committees ICSE, RE, REFSQ, ESEM, ISESE and others. She has been Program Chair for EASE 2013, ISESE 2004 and SEKE 1997 and General Chair for ESEM 2007, SNPD 2002 and SEKE 2001.

She has been member of several Editorial Boards, including Transactions on SE (Jan 20 13 - Dec 2017), Journal of Empirial Software Engineering (since 2002) and Software magazine (1997 to 2001) among others.