Shiyao holds a Bachelor of Engineering (BEng, Hons) degree in Electrical Engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS). She completed her Juris Doctor degree at University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) in 2025 and joined Marks & Clerk Singapore LLP in the same year. She has been admitted as a lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (non-practicing). 

Prior to joining Marks & Clerk, Shiyao gained experience working on a range of research projects spanning adversarial machine learning, graphical model learning, signal processing, feature engineering and gallium nitride (GaN)-based sensor design, through roles in both academic institutions and the research centre of a multinational corporation. As part of her legal training, she also had experience working at a law firm in Australia.

Shiyao is currently training to become a registered Singapore patent attorney.