He attended Republican School of Physics and Mathematics in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and then studied applied mathematics at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, graduating in 1986.

Volozh co-founded CompTek in 1989. He also started working on search in 1989, which led to him establishing Arkadia Company in 1990. The company was developing search software. In 1993, Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich developed a search engine for “non-structured information with Russian morphology”.

Arkady co-founded Yandex in 1997, later leaving his position as CEO of CompTek International to become the CEO of Yandex in 2000.

As part of a larger effort to spread machine learning, Volozh and the Yandex team established the Yandex School of Data Analysis in 2007, offering a free master’s level program in data science. The program has grown to include six branches, online courses, and other learning programs through multiple partnerships. In 2018, the school opened a branch in Tel Aviv to launch a one-year career advancement program in machine learning.

In early 2016 Volozh purchased Maltese citizenship even though he has no ties to Malta. Since Malta is in the European Union this automatically qualifies Volozh as a citizen of the European Union. As of 2013, he is worth an estimated US$1.15 billion.