From 1987 to 1999 Boavida worked in the Indonesian-occupied East Timor as a civil servant. From March 2000 he worked as a lecturer and researcher at the National University of East Timor (UNTL) at the Faculty of Sociology and Policies and at the Center for Gender Studies. From 2000 to 2007 he was also employed in various tasks at the United Nations in East Timor. From January 2001 to May 2004, he served as an administrative assistant to the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) and traveled as an election observer to the parliamentary elections in Portugal in 2002. By the end of 2004, Boavida worked as a researcher on the land and property law program before joining the March 2005 participated in a seminar of the Australian Association of Postgraduate Council (CAPA) in New Zealand.