In 2002, Tang was awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) search Fellowship and NIMS Researcher, enable to expand his research in photocatalysis in the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan. In 2005, he was appointed as a senior research associate in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, UK.
In 2009, Tang was appointed as a lecturer in energy (permanent position) in Department of Chemical Engineering at University College London, then promoted to a senior lecturer in 2011, a readership in 2014 and finally a full professor of materials chemistry and engineering in 2017. During this period, he was also appointed as the director of University Materials Hub. In 2022, Tang moved from UCL to Tsinghua University.
Tang is a member of  the Academy of Europe / Academia Europaea, a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, a Fellow of European Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry. He also sits on the editorial board of four international journals, e.g. editor of Applied Catalysis B : Environmental, editor-in-chief of Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering, associate editor of Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering and associate editor of Chin Journal of Catalysis, as well as a member of the committees of the RSC Chemical Nanoscience & Nanotechnology. He also sits on the panel of a few counties’ National Science Foundations.