Yuri Goloubev was born on July 27, 1972 in Moscow. He trained as a classical bassist, earning a bachelor's degree at the Central School of Music of the Moscow Conservatory in 1990 and a master's degree in double bass, as soloist, chamber musician and teacher, from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 1995, where he also studied composition. He won first prize in the All-Soviet-Union Students' Competition in 1990 and held New Names Foundation grants in 1992 and 1993. His orchestral career ran from 1990 to 1991 as principal bass of the Ensemble XXI Chamber Orchestra in Moscow, then a season as a section player at the Bolshoi Theatre (1991 to 1992), before twelve years, from 1992 to 2004, as principal bass of the Moscow Soloists, the chamber orchestra directed by the violist Yuri Bashmet. In 2002 he became the youngest bass player in the history of the USSR and Russia to be named an Honored Artist of Russia.

In December 2004 Goloubev moved to Milan to take up jazz full time, the music he has called his true calling. He built his new career in Italy: he recorded his first Italian jazz albums there, became a member of saxophonist Claudio Fasoli's Emerald Quartet, and from 2007 to 2009 taught jazz double bass at Milan's CPM Music Institute. In 2010 he became Jazz Double Bass Professor at the Conservatorio di Musica F.A. Bonporti in Trento, a post he still holds. Since 2015 he has also taught at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff and at Siena Jazz University, dividing his base between Italy and the United Kingdom. He has performed in close to 60 countries, at venues including Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, the Barbican Centre and the Sydney Opera House.

His first jazz leader date on record is Toremar Island (Turne, 2001), made before his move to Italy, followed by The Bridge (2003), a duo with the Russian pianist Andrei Kondakov. Once in Milan he quickly found collaborators: Tandem (2006) is a duo album co-led with pianist Guido Manusardi, who also brought him into the trio records No More No Less (2006, Sound Hills) and You And The Night And The Music, both with drummer Asaf Sirkis. With pianist Glauco Venier and Sirkis he recorded the piano trio Intermezzo (Artesuono, 2007), and with Venier alone the duo album Hommage À Duke (Caligola, 2007), eleven pieces by Duke Ellington; he also plays double bass on Venier's ten-piece tribute record Glauco Venier Suona Frank Zappa (2008). As a member of Fasoli's Emerald Quartet, alongside pianist Mario Zara and drummer Marco Zanoli, he appears on Promenade (2007), Venice Inside (2009) and Reflections (2010); the same pair of Zara and Zanoli also co-led Private Tales (2007) with him.

His first album as an outright leader, Metafore Semplici (EmArcy, 2009), is a quintet record of his own compositions and arrangements, with pianist Gwilym Simcock, trumpeter Giovanni Falzone, soprano saxophonist and bass clarinetist Klaus Gesing, and Sirkis on drums. Titanic For A Bike (Caligola, 2011) is a trio with pianist Claudio Filippini and Sirkis, expanding to a quartet with saxophonist Julian Argüelles on four tracks; All About Jazz called it his most satisfying record as a leader to that point. He also recorded the trio improvisation Conduction 3 (2010) with drummer Carlo Alberto Canevali and saxophonist and clarinetist Achille Succi, the duo The Night Of The Storytellers (Isola Dei Suoni, 2009) with saxophonist Enzo Favata and ten-string guitarist Marcello Peghin, and the trio records Il Passo Del Gatto (2006) and Mulini A Vento (2008) with pianists Michele Di Toro and Nicola Bottos respectively. He plays on pianist Massimo Colombo's trio album Il Gioco Delle Forme (2008, with Sirkis) and on saxophonist Mattia Cigalini's Res Nova (2011, with pianist Mario Zara and drummer Tony Arco).

With the English pianist Gwilym Simcock he recorded the duo album Reverie At Schloss Elmau (ACT, 2014), taped in March 2013 at the Bavarian retreat and closing with a Goloubev composing credit on a reverie by the 19th-century composer and double bassist Giovanni Bottesini; he is also a guest on several of Simcock's own records, among them Blues Vignette (2009), Throw Me The Groove (2011) and Instrumation (2014). He has recorded two further duo albums with the Italian pianist Michele Di Toro, Duonomics (2018, released 2019) and Trionomics (2023, with guitarist Hans Mathisen), and a duo of Russian repertoire, Acoustic Reflections (2016), with pianist Ivan Rakhmanov. Two Chevrons Apart (Basho Records, 2020) is his first leader album for Basho, a quartet with saxophonist Tim Garland, pianist John Turville and Sirkis on drums. His most recent leader credit is Pont De Vie (Abeat Records, 2026), billed to guitarist Maciek Pysz featuring bandoneon player Daniele Di Bonaventura and Goloubev on bass and piano.

As a sideman, Goloubev plays double bass on four tracks of On Vacation (Masterworks, 2020), the collaboration between trumpeter Till Brönner and pianist Bob James. Other guest credits include Tim Garland's Weather Walker (2018) and Refocus (2020), pianist Pablo Held's Meet Me At The Loft (2022), and a long run of records for pianist Roberto Olzer's trio and quartet between 2012 and 2024. He also retains ties to his classical training, appearing as a session player on a 2007 Toccata Classics recording of orchestral works by Igor Raykhelson performed by Bashmet, saxophonist Igor Butman and the Moscow Soloists, and on a recording of Sergei Prokofiev's string quartets and quintet by the Russian String Quartet (credited 2006 on Discogs); these two are classical credits, not part of his jazz catalogue.

Goloubev's playing carries his classical training directly into jazz. Reviewing Titanic For A Bike for All About Jazz, Ian Patterson wrote that "there are few better exponents of arco, and his tone has the warm resonance of a cello," a description that holds across his catalogue: he bows as often as he plucks, and several of his records, among them Reverie At Schloss Elmau and Acoustic Reflections, sit deliberately at the boundary between jazz and chamber music. Reverie At Schloss Elmau closes with a duo treatment of a 19th-century reverie by the Italian Romantic composer and bass virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini, re-keyed and fitted with jazz harmony for the duo to improvise over, a direct line from his conservatory years to his present music.

As a leader he writes original material rather than working from the standard songbook: Metafore Semplici and Titanic For A Bike are both built from his own compositions and arrangements, voiced for small groups built around piano, saxophone or clarinet, and drums. Critics and his own album title, Two Chevrons Apart, an ironic twist on "oceans apart," also point to a dry, playful sense of humor in his writing. His long-running duo and trio partnerships, with Gwilym Simcock, Glauco Venier and Michele Di Toro among them, favor close three-way or two-way interplay over a conventional rhythm-section role, and his catalogue runs through the overlapping jazz scenes of Italy, where he built his jazz career from 2004, and the United Kingdom, his base since 2015.