Long has worked in aerospace for over 30 years, most often specializing in Fault Tree Analysis. He maintains his fault tree analysis website, has written several papers, and was awarded the "Best Conference Paper" and "International System Safety Engineer of the Year" in 1999. Long and co-author Bill Vesely (2002) published “The Role of Fault Trees in Probabilistic Risk Assessment” in the Journal of System Safety. Long resides in Cedar Rapids with his wife and children.