He attended the University of California, Riverside where he studied biology and worked as an undergraduate research assistant for William Dawson, a plant virologist.

After completing his PhD, Carrington was a postdoc at North Carolina State University in the research group of William Dougherty until 1988.

In 2001 he moved to Oregon State University where he directed the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing.

[2] In May 2011, Carrington began as the new president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

[2] Carrington moved on to study natural small RNA molecules produced by plants including microRNAs and siRNAs,[4][5] identifying roles for these gene silencing mechanisms in both plant development and chromatin state maintenance.