From 2011 to 2019, he worked in the private sector at the audit and consulting firm KPMG Czech Republic.

In 1986, he joined the Institute of Forecasting of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences as a researcher,[5][1] where he completed postgraduate studies in economics from 1987 to 1992.

[7][1][8] Zdeněk Tůma completed several study stays at foreign universities in the first half of the 1990s:[3][2] From 1993 to 1995, he worked as an advisor to the Minister of Industry and Trade Vladimír Dlouhý.

He was confirmed in this position by President Václav Klaus for another six-year term on 11 February 2005.

[3][4][1] Along with the other members of the Bank Board, Tůma had a wide range of responsibilities as Governor of the CNB, including monetary policy, financial market supervision, foreign exchange reserve management, the payment system and currency processing.

[2] He left KPMG in 2019, and from 16 October that year he took up the position of chair of the Supervisory Board of ČSOB a.s., where he succeeded Pavel Kavánek.