Dent spent the summer of 1924 at her parents home in Warminster, playing mixed doubles tennis in a tournament organised by the local Womens Unionist Association. In September of the same year, she was appointed an assistant teacher in mathematics at the High School for Girls, in Barnsley, Huddersfield Road, on an annual salary of £250 (). Annie Rose Nuttall, the school's head teacher, was a former student at Newnham College. In the early 1920s, women who had studied university level mathematics faced limited employment prospects, as mathematics and engineering professions, other than perhaps school teaching, were dominated by men. Dent resigned her position on 31August 1925 after being appointed a demonstrator (research assistant) in the Department of Physics at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the forerunner of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).