Malterre-Barthes attended École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Marseille-Luminy and ETHZ, where she received her Ph.D. on the political economy of commodities, nominated for the silver medal.
[1] She worked for architecture firms Coop Himmelblau, Rudy Ricciotti and B. V. Doshi.
After graduating, Malterre worked in several offices before opening her own urban design agency in Zurich with Noboru Kawagishi called OMNIBUS.
[2] In 2011, she joined the ETHZ as a research assistant and became the director of the MAS program in Urban Design.
In 2020, Malterre joined the faculty at Harvard University Graduate School of Design as an assistant professor.