Mayak was born in 1915 in a village in Kharkiv region into the family of a railroad worker. She graduated from Kharkiv College of Landscape Architecture in 1933, proceeding to work as a draftswoman at the Trust for Green Building and later as architect-dendrologist at Kharkiv Prombudproekt. She continued her education at the Department of Landscape Architecture of Kharkiv Institute of Infrastructure Engineering between 1937 and 1941. 

Throughout her long career, Mayak created over hundred landscape architecture projects. In the aftermath of the Second World War, she worked as the head of the construction office of the Trust of Green Building. In 1944, Mayak participated in designing the masterplan for the Exposition of Achievements of National Economy in Kharkiv, which was built on the war-ruined Dzerzhinsky (now Freedom) square. Mayak was responsible for the Pavillion of Agriculture and for the main entrance to the exposition. Among Mayak’s other design projects of this time in Kharkiv were the Victory Square (with O. Kasyanov and V. Korok, 1946), the reconstruction of Taras Shevchenko garden (1945-1946; 1948-1952), Chernozavodkyi park (1946-1948), Botanical garden (1954-1956), Luxembourg (Pavlivskyi) square and the square of Soviet Ukraine (Constitution Square), the cascade fountain (1955), Rudnev park (near contemporary square of the Heaven’s Hundred Heroes), Artyom park (park of Machine Constructors), and 50 Years of October Revolution (Udyanski) Hydropark.

Between the late 1950s and the 1970s, Mayak contributed to the design of hydropower stations: Kremenchuk (1956-1963), Middle Dnieper (1960-1968), Kyiv (1962-1970), and Kaniv (1968-1971).

Since 1971, she taught urban planning at Kharkiv Institute of Infrastructure Construction (former Kharkiv Institute of Infrastructure Engineering). During this period, she also published on landscape architecture and its history.