After her PhD, Cebe moved to the Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a postdoctoral research associate. She then became a member of their technical staff and was promoted to Technical Group Leader of the Polymer Physics Group. In 1988, Cebe joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying the structure and properties of semi-crystalline polymers. In 1995, Cebe began her faculty position at Tufts University, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
