Prior to her move to the Netherlands, she won the BWF World Junior Championships in girls' doubles with Liu Lu in 1994 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and helped the Chinese national women's team clinch a gold medal at the 1997 East Asian Games.

Since moving to the Netherlands Yao Jie has won the women's singles event 4 times at the Dutch Open (2003, 2008, 2009 & 2011), she won the Thailand Open twice (2004, 2005), and the biennial European Championships once (2002), and a high number of 11 Dutch National Championships.

The conflict heightened in 2011 when these four non Yonex sponsored players were not included in the National squad to play the European Team Championships in Amsterdam.

Despite all these juridical sponsor wranglings, Yao Jie managed to qualify for the London Olympics.

At the 2012 Olympic Games in the Women's Singles Yao Jie won Group F by beating Akvilė Stapušaitytė of Lithuania 21–16, 21–7 and Ragna Ingólfsdóttir of Iceland 21–12, 25–23.