Amaya obtained her medical degree from the University of Barcelona, before her clinical training in Dermatology and Venereology at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona. She became a Fulbright Scholar in dermatology and pathology at the University of California in San Francisco, and later joined the Institute of Cancer Research where she undertook work to complete her PhD with Prof Richard Marais.

In 2016, Amaya was awarded a Wellcome Intermediate Clinician Scientist Fellowship to develop her research programme that combined her doctoral experience of melanoma with her clinical interest in skin cancer and ageing. In 2023, she was awarded a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellowship. Amaya is an Honorary Consultant in Dermatology at Salford NHS Foundation Trust, with a practice in general dermatology and high-risk skin cancer.

Her research aims to understand the mechanisms that drive more metastatic skin cancer in ageing patients and to develop novel therapeutic approaches for melanoma treatment by age, in metastatic organs. Amaya also leads a BRC project to develop novel biomarkers that predict skin cancer outcomes.