After her graduation from the University of Benin in 1982, Patience Maseli was deployed to Rivers State for the mandatory National Youth Service Programme of the
National Youth Service Corps. She was posted to the Research and Development Division of the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) where she worked as a
palynologist within the geology laboratory. She gained full employment into the
NNPC in 1983 and was deployed to the Petroleum Inspectorate Division (now known as the
Department of Petroleum Resources) as a Petrophysicist. She was promoted to the position of Senior Geologist in 1992, Chief Geologist in 2003, Assistant Director in 2006 and finally to the position of Deputy Director and Head of Upstream Division in 2017. She retired in November 2018 when she attained the mandatory retirement age of 60 years. ==Personal life==