Balázs Lengyel considers himself primarily a researcher in economic geography, working at the intersection of network science. 

A defining experience in his career was his one-year fellowship at MIT between 2016 and 2017. During this period, he secured a five-year research project worth HUF 150 million, which enabled him to establish his own research group, ANET, at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). This group primarily conducts research in economics and economic geography. 

At Corvinus University, he is a research professor at the Department of Network Science within the Institute of Data Analytics and Information Systems and the head of the ANETI Lab at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS). In 2022, he received the Corvinus Research Excellence Award, primarily for his publications on the geographical spread of iWiW and the relationship between the iWiW network and income inequalities.