Holger Giese studied technical computer science at the University Siegen. He received his engineering degree with excellence in October 1995. In February 2001, he received a doctorate in Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Münster with summa cum laude. Until 2006, he was an assistant professor for object-oriented specification of distributed systems in the Software Engineering Group of the University of Paderborn. Since 2006, he was a Visiting Professor for System Analysis and Modeling at the Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering. He became a Full Professor for System Analysis and Modeling at the Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering in February 2008.

He is member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the IEEE Computer Society, the German Informatics Society (GI), and the German University Council (DHV).