Holoubek graduated from the Łódź Film School department of Director of Photography & Television Production in 2001. He shot films directed by Juliusz Machulski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Krystyna Janda and Jerzy Stuhr, amongst others. The experience he gained came in handy when he started directing himself – as Holoubek emphasises, a good understanding of each position that constitutes a film crew makes directorial work easier.
The director's father, Gustaw, was one of the most famous Polish actors of the 20th century and played roles that made history. As Jan Holoubek said in an interview for the Polish edition of Newsweek, living up to the expectations everyone had of him was no easy task. He eventually handled it by making Słońce i Cień (2007, Sun & Shadow, trans. NS), a documentary film about his father. The work featured the legendary actor and his friend, the acclaimed writer and director Tadeusz Konwicki, who appeared on-screen as Gustaw Holoubek's interlocutor, but also as support for the director during the filmmaking process, as well as for his father, whose health was in decline.
For the next several years, Holoubek mainly worked as director of photography. He came back to directing in 2014, when he made a TV mockumentary film titled Pocztówki z Republiki Absurdu (Postcards from the Absurd Republic, trans. NS) that shows a counterfactual version of Polish history, with the country still under the communist regime.
Holoubek's next project for the small screen turned out to be a success – in 2018, the criminal TV series Rojst, co-written by Holoubek and Kasper Bajon, premiered. The plot was set in a fictional Polish town in the 1980s. The show starred Andrzej Seweryn, Dawid Ogrodnik, Piotr Fronczewski, Zofia Wichłacz and others. A year later Holoubek also did television work, directing several episodes of the show Odwróceni: Ojcowie i Córki.