Jay Quade was born and grew up in Nevada. As a teenager, he set two all-time Nevada State high school track and field records. At the University of New Mexico, he had a track scholarship, for four years. He was twice an NCAA All-American in track and once an NCAA champion in track (relay race). In 1977 he became a geologist employed by 
the Mineral Exploration Division of Utah International, Inc. In 1978 he graduated with B.S. in geology from the University of New Mexico. In 1982 he graduated with an M.S. in geology from the University of Arizona. From 1982 to 1989 he worked as a geologist in Nevada — from 1982 to 1984 for Noranda Exploration, Inc., from 1984 to 1986 for the Desert Research Institute, and from 1986 to 1989 for Mifflin & Associates (a mining consulting firm founded in 1986 by the geologist Martin David Mifflin). From 1989 to 1990 Quade was a graduate student at the University of Utah, where he received his Ph.D. in 1990. In 1991 he was a postdoc at the Australian National University. At the University of Arizona, he was appointed to an assistant professorship in 1992, an associate professorship in 1998, and a full professorship in 2003.
Quade's research is remarkably varied, including low-temperature geochemistry, radiometric dating using a variety of isotopes, and theoretical reconstructions of paleoenvironments, mostly from the Cenozoic. Some of his projects have involved archaeologists and anthropologists. Quade with Thure E. Cerling and other colleagues did important research on stable isotope composition of soil carbonate in the Great Basin. In 2001, Quade with Nathan B. English, Julio L. Betancourt, and Jeffrey S. Dean published an important paper on the deforestation of Chaco Canyon. As a geological team member, Quade has done fieldwork on stratigraphy and paleohydrologic reconstruction in the western USA, gold deposits in Oregon, Alaska, and Nevada, and paleo-lake hydrology in Mongolia, Tibet, Chile, Argentina, and the western USA. From 1985 to 2015 his fieldwork on low temperature geochemistry has been done all over the world: parts of the US, Asia, Australia, and South America, as well as Greece and Ethiopia.
In 2001 Quade won the Farouk El-Baz Award of the Geological Society of America (GSA). In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of American and also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). In 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Geochemical Society. He received in 2016 a Lady Davis Fellowship from the Hebrew University and in 2017 a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship from the University of Tokyo. In 2018 he was awarded the Arthur L. Day Medal.
In Nevada on December 21, 1984, Jay Quade married Barbra A. Valdez. They have three children.