After MSc in Clinical Biochemistry in University of Kuopio in 1982, Anna-Marja Säämänen worked as a research assistant and later as a doctoral student in the Department of Anatomy in University of Kuopio. In 1989 she defended her thesis on Articular cartilage proteoglycans and joint loading. A study in young rabbits and dogs. Publications of the University of Kuopio, Medicine, Original Reports 7/1989Thereafter she went for a post-doctoral period, January 1990-May 1992, in University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama to study extracellular matrix biology of proteoglycans. In 1992, she joined the team of Eero Vuorio at the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku where the research focused on the molecular biology of cartilage collagens and other extracellular molecules in relation to chondrogenesis and development of osteoarthritic lesions using transgenic mice as model organisms. 

Since 2007 she has been a laboratory manager at the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku with increasing tasks in the development and maintenance of the research infrastructure.