Pollock has previously taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, where he studied with Daniel H. H. Ingalls. Pollock's dissertation, completed in 1975, was entitled "Aspects of Versification in Sanskrit Lyric Poetry."

In 2010 Pollock was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, by the government of India.

In a series of articles in the 1980s and 1990s, Pollock became known as one of the most innovative theorists working in the discipline of Indian intellectual history. Besides his interests in Sanskrit poetry (kavya), poetics (alamkarasastra), and the Mimamsa school of Vedic exegesis, he has published articles dealing with Hindu nationalism and the history of Orientalism.

Some defenders of traditional Oriental studies, such as Reinhold Grunendahl, have argued that Pollock exaggerates the connection between Nazism and German Indology in his "Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj" (1993). Pollock has also been criticized for his emphasis on secular aspects of Sanskrit literary culture and his lack of interest in the field of religious studies.

In spite of these criticisms, Pollock is arguably the early 21st century's most important and wide-ranging thinker in the field of Indian intellectual history, as exemplified by his magnum opus, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (2006).