Ueda graduated from the University of Tokyo with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and then studied at Faculty of Economics under Hirofumi Uzawa, Ryutaro Komiya, and Koichi Hamada.

[1] From April 2011 to June 2012, Ueda was president of the Japan Economic Association.

[1] In February 2023, Ueda was nominated by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to succeed the long-serving Haruhiko Kuroda as Governor of the Bank of Japan.

He was an unexpected choice as the position is usually filled by a senior official from the Ministry of Finance or the bank itself.

[3][4] On 19 March 2024, the BoJ under Ueda decided to end the zero-interest-rate policy and the yield curve control.