Dev started his career as a lecturer in Ripon College in Kolkata. As the college was transferred from Calcutta to Dinajpur during World War II, he moved as well. In 1945, the college re-located to Kolkata, but Dev decided to stay back in Dinajpur as the founding principal of the new branch of Surendranath College. Later, in July 1953, he joined the Department of Philosophy at Dhaka University. He also served as the house tutor of Dhaka hall in 1957 before being appointed as the provost of Jagannath Hall in the same year. Dev was appointed as the chairman of the department of philosophy in 1963. On 1 July 1967, Dev became a full professor. In the late 1960s he taught in Wilkes-Barre College in Pennsylvania, USA as a visiting professor. His admirers in the college founded The Govinda Dev Foundation for World Brotherhood for the propagation of Dev's humanist philosophy. Dev was elected the general secretary of Pakistan Philosophical Congress in the 1960s and held the post till his death in 1971. He also set up a Philosophy House in Dhaka University to promote and practice his life-oriented and humanist philosophy, which became a center for intellectual and cultural activities in the university. Dev donated the bulk of his belongings to the university in his lifetime. The donation facilitated the establishment of Center for Philosophical Studies at Dhaka University in 1980. Dev was a life-long bachelor, although he adopted a son Jyoti Prakash Dutta and a daughter, Rokeya Begum Sultana.
Assassination
Dev was assassinated along with the husband of his adopted daughter by Pakistan army personnel involved in 1971 Dhaka University massacre on the black night of 25 March. At that time, Dev was residing in a university quarter near Jagannath Hall with his adopted daughter Rokeya Sultana and her husband Mohammad Ali. At around 11 p.m., the residents of the house were awakened by the sound of gunfire as the army raided the campus. As Rokeya remarked later, bullets were hitting the house like a hailstorm. The family took shelter in a small room and kept awake the whole night. In the morning of 26 a group of soldiers came to the door. They started banging on the door as they shouted in Urdu, "You son of an infidel, open the door." As Dev proceeded to open the door, the door collapsed on him. Upon entering the house, one of the soldiers hit on his head with his rifle and another one shot him on the chest. Dev feebly asked, "What do you want here, son?" In response, the soldiers shot a few more rounds at him. Two bullets hit him in the head and the other bullets hit him in the chest. Dev died immediately. The soldiers beat Rokeya mercilessly and killed her husband. They also plunged a bayonet into the professor's lifeless body. They later took the dead bodies to the grounds of Jagannath hall where the bodies of the other victims of the massacre were dumped.
