Schuster "knew from a young age he wanted to go into particle physics." He earned his bachelor's degree in physics from MIT in 2003 followed by master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard, with his thesis Uncovering the New Standard Model at the LHC advised by Nima Arkani-Hamed. He held positions at SLAC and the Institute for Advanced Study, as well as a junior faculty position at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, before returning to SLAC as associate professor in 2015.