Jiří Weigl graduated in foreign trade economics from the University of Economics in Prague and subsequently in the specialisation of Oriental and Arabic Studies from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Prior to 1989 he worked as a researcher at the Economic Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he received a postgraduate degree in the field of global economics. In 1990 he entered the Ministry of Finance, where he focused on the issue of international financial institutions and the International Monetary Fund, and worked as an adviser to the then Federal Minister of Finance Václav Klaus. He completed a research internship at the International Monetary Fund focused on financial programming and policy.

In 1992 he moved on to the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, where he served as economic adviser to the Prime Minister, and from June 1993 to 1997 he was the Head of the Board of Advisers of the Prime Minister. He then worked at Investiční a poštovní banka as Senior Director for Strategy and Marketing.

In the years 2000 to 2003 he worked as the Director of the Centre for Economics and Politics (CEP). In the 1990s he was a member of the Supervisory Board of the National Property Fund and served on the supervisory boards of several major companies (Czech Railways, Czechoslovak Airlines, Investiční a poštovní banka (IPB), Český Telecom, and the coal extraction and processing company Sokolovská uhelná). He has been the Chancellor of the Office of the President of the Czech Republic since March 2003.