Durney graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S.E.E. from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah in 1985 and received a M.S.E.E. from the University of Southern California in 1986. He joined Bell Laboratories at AT&T in Denver, Colorado in 1985 as a Member of Technical Staff. As an individual contributor at AT&T, he did system and firmware design for the System 85 PBX, was a chief architect for the DEFINITY Generic 2 PBX, was architect and developer for the AT&T Autoplex wireless system, architected the development for the DACS VI digital cross connect system, led the research and implementation effort for the first voice over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) realization at AT&T, and led the architecture and design of the Personal Handyphone System (PHS) in-building wireless telephone system for DEFINITY in Japan. In 1987, Durney was presented as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (DMTS).

In 1998, Durney spent four years in Japan as the Technical Manager of Engineering and the Chief Operating Officer for Japan operations for Lucent Technologies and Avaya Inc. There he was responsible for new Japan product development, presales engineering, post sales technical support, operations, ordering, and IT planning and implementation. Durney was also key to the creation of the strategic alliances with Denso and Iwatsu corporations in Japan, and is fluent in Japanese.