Maleš started his football career with HNK Šibenik, debuting for the first team at the age of 17, on 4 August 2006 against Dinamo Zagreb.

He was set to sign his first professional contract in February 2008, after a tournament in Hong Kong in which he played for the first team.

As a consequence, he did not play a single match from 26 March 2014 until 2 August 2015, in process missing the entire 2014–15 season, with the exception of one Rijeka II appearance in 3.

[4] Maleš scored his first ever Prva HNL goal in Rijeka's 2–1 away win against Lokomotiva on 17 October 2015.

[6] However, after Wanda Group took charge of the club at the end of February 2018 and bought Nicolás Gaitán and Yannick Carrasco from Atlético Madrid, he was excluded from the squad due to the limitation of the numbers of foreign players.

He made his international debut on 5 March 2014, aged 24, in a friendly away match against Switzerland,[14] where he was in the starting line-up and eventually replaced by Luka Modrić in 56th minute.