Right before the breakup of the Soviet Union, he started with other partners own business operating a coal and natural resources company in Kazakhstan.

In 1994, Zhakiyanov was appointed as the head of Semipalatinsk Province in the newly independent Kazakhstan.

In 2001, Zhakiyanov along with Oraz Jandosov, Deputy Prime Minister, Mukhtar Ablyazov, former Minister of Industry, Nurzhan Subhanberdin, the president of Kazkommerzbank, Tolen Tokhtassynov, the member of Parlament RK, and other top politicians and businessmen of the Republic founded and later was elected as the chairman of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (QDT) while being in prison.

In 2012, he along with his family immigrated to the United States, and settled in Boston and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the MBA program at the Sloane School.

In 2008, he started new business ventures in China and Mongolia related to coal and iron-ore mining.