In 1901, Zubarev was invited by the inventor of the radio Alexander Popov to assume the position of senior laboratory assistant at the Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical Institute, where he took part in organization of a physical laboratory.
[3][4] In 1923, Zubarev was elected professor at the Department of Physics of the Far Eastern University, where he worked until 1930.
Since 1930, Zubarev was an associate professor at the Leningrad University and, at the same time, eas a senior research fellow at the State Optical Institute and as well as a lecturer at Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute.
[1] For more than 50 years of work in different universities in Russia and the USSR, Zubarev was engaged not only in pedagogical, but also in research activity.
Simultaneously with German physicist Arthur Wehnelt he built an electrolytic interrupter; he also investigated the polarization of light upon reflection from metals; determined the optical constants of metallic crystals; he was first in Russia (together with Mitrofan Glagolev) to get an X-ray diffraction pattern from crystals according to the Laue method; he determined the thermoelectric power of the graphite-coal pair.