Dubin attended public school at Washington Heights’ P.S. 132 and went on to attend college at Stony Brook University, where he graduated in 1978 with a degree in economics. He was also a member of the school’s football team and lacrosse club.

Dubin began his career in finance as a retail stock broker at E. F. Hutton & Co. in 1978. At E. F. Hutton & Co. Dubin met and worked with Paul Tudor Jones.

In 1984, Glenn Dubin and his childhood friend Henry Swieca co-founded Dubin & Swieca Capital Management. The company was an early fund of funds business that constructed multi-manager hedge fund portfolios guided by the principles of modern portfolio theory. In 2005, the firm was renamed Corbin Capital Partners, as Dubin and Swieca were no longer involved in the day-to-day management of the company. The new name reportedly originated from an intersection in Washington Heights where the founders first met when they were 5 years old.

In 1987, Dubin was asked by fellow hedge fund manager and close friend Paul Tudor Jones to join him and Peter Borish in a venture philanthropy project Jones had conceived and started. The resulting Robin Hood Foundation has raised and granted more than $2 billion to fight poverty in New York City. Dubin has served on the board since its founding, is a former Board Chair, and sits on the Jobs and Economic Security subcommittee.

In 1992, Dubin and Swieca founded Highbridge Capital Management with $35 million in capital, naming the institutional alternative-asset management firm after the 19th Century aqueduct that connects Washington Heights with the Bronx. In late 2004, J.P. Morgan Asset Management—a division of JPMorgan Chase—purchased a majority interest in Highbridge. The Financial Times reported in 2006 that JPMorgan paid Glenn Dubin an “an estimated $1bn in 2004” for his majority stake in Highbridge Capital Management.

In 1994, Dubin married Dr. Eva Andersson and the couple has three children (two daughters and a son). He first saw Eva on the New York Post’s Page Six in a modeling photo.

In 2006, Highbridge invested as a joint venture in Louis Dreyfus Group to increase their access to and control of energy delivery within trading markets. In October 2012, it was announced that Dubin, Paul Tudor Jones and Timothy Barakett were among a group of investors buying the merchant energy operation, then called Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy (“LDH Energy”), and renamed the firm Castleton Commodities International, LLC.

In July 2009, J.P. Morgan Asset Management completed its purchase of substantially all remaining shares of the firm. After the purchase, Dubin remained Highbridge’s chief executive. By 2011, Dubin was sharing responsibilities for managing Highbridge with Todd Builione and Scott Kapnick. By 2013, Glenn Dubin had “handed control” of Highbridge to Scott Kapnick a former Goldman Sachs banker, but continued to work in the firm’s New York offices.

In 2010, Dubin established the Dubin Fellowship for Emerging Leaders at the Center for Public Leadership, an academic research center at Harvard Kennedy School, with a $5 million gift. He had formed a relationship with the school two years prior while speaking before the school’s students. The fellowship provides tuition for up to ten students each year. Dubin also serves on the Kennedy School’s Dean’s Executive Committee.

In 2010, the Dubin family donated $4.3 million to Stony Brook University towards the creation of the Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center in the Stony Brook Indoor Sports Complex. In 2015, the Dubin family donated $5 million towards the creation of Stony Brook University’s Indoor Training Facility, which opened in 2020.

Dubin is a trustee of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center. He and his wife funded the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in 2010 to provide comprehensive integrated breast care in a patient-centered environment. The multidisciplinary Center is headed by Dr. Elisa Port.

On April 19, 2012, Dubin and his wife Eva signed The Giving Pledge, created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The commitment of the pledge is to give away at least 50% of their wealth to charity within their lifetime.

In 2013, Dubin founded the quantitative-trading firm Engineers Gate Manager LP. The company along with Dubin’s family office are headquartered at Hudson Yards. In January 2020, Dubin announced he was retiring from the hedge fund industry after four decades to focus on private investments.

In August 2019, unsealed documents revealed connections between Dubin and Jeffrey Epstein, including allegations of involvement in his sexual abuse ring. Former house manager for the Dubins, Rinaldo Rizzo, described a 2005 encounter at the Dubin’s home with a 15-year-old girl employed as a nanny. Rizzo said the girl, who was shaking and crying, told him that she was pressured by Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with Epstein, with Maxwell taking her passport when she refused. A month into her employ, according to The Daily Beast, the Dubins took the girl with them to Sweden, where she was dropped off at an airport. The unsealed court documents were from a lawsuit filed in 2015 against Maxwell by Virginia Roberts Giuffre who named several individuals as participants in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme that included Glenn Dubin as one of the men with which Epstein and Maxwell forced her to have sex.

In September 2020 the Attorney General of the British Virgin Islands subpoenaed the Dubins as part of their probe into the dealings of Jeffrey Epstein.