The head and the deputy heads of department are responsible for the work of the department. In 2014, Professor Jukka Paakki was the head of the department, and the deputy heads were Professor Jyrki Kivinen and Professor Sasu Tarkoma. In addition, the department has a department council comprising three professors, three representatives of other staff, and three students.The members of the department council are elected every four years. The department council has a secretary who handles the distribution of the documents for the council meetings.

In the past, the instruction was divided into three sub-programmes and one Master’s programme. In autumn 2014, the Master’s programme was converted into its own sub-programme. At the same time, the name of one of the other sub-programmes was specified in more detail, and a new course profile combining two sub-programmes was formed. The supervisors heading the sub-programmes in 2014 were Professor Jyrki Kivinen (algorithms and machine learning, from autumn 2014 algorithms, data analytics and machine learning), Professor Sasu Tarkoma (networking and services), and Professor Tomi Männistö (software systems). The head of the bioinformatics Master’s programme was Professor Veli Mäkinen (Master's Degree Programme in Bioinformatics, MBI), who acted as the head of the corresponding sub-programme (algorithmic bioinformatics) from autumn 2014. Professors Kivinen and Tarkoma are the liaisons for the new data science course profile. Professor Petri Myllymäki acted as head of the department’s own doctoral programme (DoCS) in 2014. Furthermore, the department participated in two research schools in 2014, with professor Myllymäki also acting as director of the Hecse graduate school.

Research at the department is ordered into research units and groups. The Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT (in collaboration with Aalto University) operates in conjunction with the department; in 2014, HIIT was headed by professor Samuel Kaski of Aalto University. Some of the department’s research groups work within HIIT. In addition, some of the department’s research groups are part of Finnish Academy centres of excellence.

In 2014, the department administration was divided into (1) teaching administration, with Head of Studies Jaakko Kurhila in charge, (2) general, HR and financial administration, with Office Manager Tiina Väisänen in charge, (3) research and graduate-school administration, with Research Coordinator Pirjo Moen in charge, and (4) information technology, with IT Manager Petri Kutvonen in charge. Furthermore, the department comprised a steering committee, a teaching administration committee, the board for the DoCS programme, the workforce for improving teaching, and the wellbeing-at-work team. The department staff is also represented in numerous faculty and university committees, as well as external organisations.