Volodymyr Sirenko was born in 1960 in the Poltava region of Ukraine. His conducting debut took place at the Kyiv Philharmonic Hall in 1983 with works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Boulez. In 1989, Sirenko graduated from the Kyiv Conservatoire where he studied conducting under Prof. Allin Vlasenko. In 1990, he was a finalist at the International Conducting Competition in Prague. A year later, he was appointed as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position which he held until 1999. During this period he made over 200 recordings including Mozart Symphonies nos. 38 and 41, Beethoven Symphony no. 9, Brahms A German Requiem, Dvorak Symphonies nos. 7 and 9, R. Strauss Macbeth, and Janacek Taras Bulba.

Since 1999, he has been Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (NSOU). Highlights from his tenure so far include performances of Gustav Mahler's Complete Symphonies, Bach's Four Passions and Mass in B Minor, Lyatoshynsky's Complete Symphonies, Honegger's Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, Berlioz's La damnation de Faust, and Debussy's Le Martyre de St. Sebastien.

He has made over 50 recordings with the NSOU with the CD of Silvestrov's Requiem for Larissa receiving a Grammy Award nomination in 2005. Volodymyr Sirenko has premiered many works by Ukrainian composers including Sylvestrov's Symphonies nos. 7, 8, 9, Stankovych's Symphony no. 6, oratorios A Tale of Igor's Campain, and Taras Passion.

Sirenko has toured Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

He has worked with many international orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Warsovia, NOSPR (Katowice), the Bratislava Radio Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the BBC Philharmonic. Sirenko has appeared in numerous concert halls around the world, including Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Berliner Philharmonie, Brucknerhaus (Linz), Barbican Hall and Cadogan Hall (London), Theatre des Champs-Elysees and Opera Comique (Paris), Teatro La Fenice (Venice), Seoul Art Center, Palau de la Musica in Valencia, and Centro Manuel de Falla in Granada, Filharmonia Narodowa (Warsaw), the Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto), the Tokyo City Opera, and the Osaka Symphony Hall (Japan).