McNutt was the 15th director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) (the first woman to hold the post) as well as science adviser to the United States Secretary of the Interior. Before working for USGS, McNutt was president and chief executive officer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), an oceanographic research center in the United States, professor of marine geophysics at the Stanford University School of Earth Sciences and professor of marine geophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz.