He is a development economist who worked closely with former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan when both were at the International Monetary Fund.

The post had been lying vacant since Raghuram Rajan left the finance ministry to join as governor of the Reserve Bank of India in September 2013.

[7] On 20 June 2018, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that owing to family commitments, Subramanian would be stepping down before the scheduled end of his tenure to return to academia in the US.

[7][8] Jaitley noted that Subramanian's early diagnosis of the twin balance-sheet led to the government outlining higher public investment in the union budget of 2015–16.

[7] In his role as the CEA, Subramanian was responsible for bringing out the annual Economic Survey of India, traditionally released prior to the presentation of the union budget in the Indian parliament.

In March 2013, Subramanian, then a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute and CGD, appeared before United States House Committee on Ways and Means hearing on "US-India trade relations: Opportunities and Challenges."

During his testimony, Arvind Subramanian stated that "by discriminating against Indian companies and exporters, (US initiatives) will exert natural pressure on India to open up".