Soloway is known for creating, writing, executive producing and directing the Amazon original series Transparent, winning two Emmy Awards for the show;[5] directing and writing the film Afternoon Delight, winning the Best Director award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival; and producing Six Feet Under.

[16][17][18] Soloway's mother was formerly a press aide to Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and was a former communications director for School Superintendent Ruth Love.

After college Soloway worked as a production assistant in commercials and music videos in Chicago, as well as at Kartemquin Films on the movie Hoop Dreams.

Also at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, the pair created plays The Miss Vagina Pageant, and later, while in Los Angeles, Not Without My Nipples.

Soloway followed those shows by writing for four seasons on the HBO original series Six Feet Under, ultimately serving as co-executive producer.

[24] Soloway's short story, Courteney Cox's Asshole, caught the attention of Alan Ball and led to the job.

[31] The show stars Gaby Hoffmann, Jay Duplass, and Amy Landecker as siblings whose parent (played by Jeffrey Tambor) reveals she is going through a significant life transition[clarify].

[16][33] As part of the making of the show, Soloway enacted a "transfirmative action program", whereby transgender applicants were hired in preference to non-transgender ones.

The film tells the story of a woman (Watkins) who hires a day laborer (Valderrama) to do some work at her home, but their relationship soon goes beyond the professional.

[40] The film follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), a thirty-something woman who is struggling to rekindle her relationship with her husband (Josh Radnor), and ultimately befriends an exotic dancer (Juno Temple).

[41] In an interview by IndieWire, Soloway had a personal connection to the film's central character, explaining "There's a lot of me in Rachel's journey.

Soloway's memoir, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story, was released in hardcover in 2005, and in paperback in 2006.

[47] In 2018, Soloway published another book, She Wants It: Desire, Power and Toppling the Patriarchy, with Ebury Press, a division of Penguin Random House.

It's about big themes like familial secrets and transformation, revelation and change, all of which are rendered through the specificity and magic of television images and sounds, which create imaginative worlds.

[48] Soloway's writing is often about "The Heroine's Journey," which is about "repairing the divided feminine: the wife and the other woman confronting each other--mom, stripper.

[58] Also in 2016, Soloway was a finalist for The Advocate's Person of the Year,[59] and was named to Oprah Winfrey's SuperSoul 100 list of visionaries and influential leaders.

"[69] Soloway also co-founded the East Side Jews collective,[70] which is funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

[71] The collective "brings together 20- and 30-something Jews in Silver Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods of Los Angeles for offbeat, too-cool-for-shul events that tend to be heavy on comedy and light on Jewish ritual.