Dr. Zahid has 32 years of working experience in research and training/teaching in the field of rural development and development administration (especially on human resources management, entrepreneurship development, financial management, development administration, local government institution, co-operatives, and local level planning and project management) at Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD), Comilla, Bangladesh. He has extensive experience in conducting adaptive research, survey and evaluation studies, feasibility studies and preparation of qualitative and quantitative reports in different areas of social science and business.

He has also extensive experience in assessing training needs, designing course curriculum, preparing a training handbook/facilitator guide, organizing in-country and international training programs/workshops/seminars for the officials of government and semi-government organizations and NGOs executives. He took training sessions/classes with the governmental and non-governmental officials, local government representatives and students of public, private and international universities in different areas of development administration, financial management, HRM and rural development.

He was appointed as an Assistant Director (Accounting) in Rural Economics and Business Management Division (as a Faculty member) in July 1983. Prior to joining BARD, he served as a Lecturer in Accounting at Badiul Alam College, Companigonj, Comilla in 1982.

In the earlier stage of his service he mostly served in Rural Economics and Business Management Division- an academic division of BARD from 1983-2000 in different positions such as- Assistant Director, Deputy Director and Joint Director of Business Management discipline, where he was mainly responsible to perform training, research and project activities of the organization. Moreover, he also held several administrative positions- Joint Director, Research (2000-2002), Joint Director, General Administration (2002-2004), as well as held Director of three Service Divisions like Director Training (2010-2012) and Director, Administration (Additional Charge), Director, Research (2013-2017) of BARD. As Director (Training) he was responsible for designing, finalizing and implementation of training programs, workshops and seminars for different clientele groups including overall coordination of training activities with the assistance of Faculty members of different academic and service divisions. As Director (Research), head of the Division he was responsible for reviewing and finalizing the research proposal and annual research plan, implementation of ongoing research activities of the academy along with providing data collection and tabulation support to the Faculty members. Director Research was also responsible for monitoring and coordination of all research activities of the Faculty members including review and publication of research reports.

He was involved as Convenor in designing Development Project Proposal (DPP) on Ekti Bari Ekti Khamar Project, which is being implemented by the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives. He has obtained vast experience through working with different ministries, national and international project sponsoring organizations namely USAID, DFID, UNDP, ILO, ADB, PKSF, The Asia Foundation Manusher Jonno Foundation, and the World Bank.