He was born on 21 April 1962 in Mahdia, Tunisia. He graduated from the National Engineering School, Tunis in 1998.^[5] He is an engineer by profession. He also holds a postgraduate degree in structural mechanics and in modeling.^[5] He spent most of his career at Hutchinson and at Total.^[5] He is married and has five children.^[6] He was a general manager at Hutchinson Aerospace when he quit his job.^[7]

After Hamadi Jebali asked him to be part of his government, he quit his professional career^[8] to contribute to the country's transition into democracy^[7] after the crackdown of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali government in the 2011 uprising. He did not belong to any political party; he was an Independent. On 13 March 2013, he became Minister of Industry in a coalition government led by Ennahda after Ali Laarayedh appealed him to be part of his government.^[9] After the assassination of Mohamed Brahmi in July, there had been a political deadlock.^[10] To ease the situation, parties entered a national dialogue which was held for weeks; on 14 December 2013, both ruling and opposition parties agreed to choose Jomaa as the interim Prime Minister until the next election.^[4] His government was technocratic.^[8] The leftist Popular Front coalition doubted whether he could handle the present situation.^[8] His caretaker government carried out the process for new elections and attempted to deal with the economic issues.^[8]

After Habib Essid became Prime Minister in February 2015, Mehdi Jomaa spent a year away from political life until in early February 2016 he announced the formation of a think-tank and political program dubbed "Tunisia Alternatives".^[11] A year later, in March 2017, he converted Tunisia Alternatives into a political party.^[12]