In 2021, Patel starred in the HBO miniseries Station Eleven, earning a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, and appeared in Adam McKay's Netflix film Don't Look Up.

[8] When he was 16, Patel received a call on the day of his GCSEs saying he had landed an audition for the British soap opera EastEnders through an agency in The Young Actors' Company.

Patel won the part of Tamwar Masood, and 1 October 2007 marked his first appearance on EastEnders.

[9] In 2013 he filmed an internet spin-off of EastEnders called Tamwar Tales - The Life of an Assistant Market Inspector.

[13][14] At the Shuffle festival, it won a third award, judged by Danny Boyle, who would later direct Patel in Yesterday (2019).

[19] On 27 September 2016 he made his first appearance on TV since leaving EastEnders in the first episode of the Channel 4 sitcom Damned.

[21] In 2017 he was cast in Don Juan in Soho as "Vagabond" with David Tennant playing the titular character.

He voiced Biotech Dendry in Day of the Vashta Nerada as well as Engineer and Ayrton Valencia in The Lifeboat and the Deathboat.

[28] Patel was cast as Emery Staines in The Luminaries, a mini-series based on the 2013 book by Eleanor Catton.

[31] In 2020, Patel appeared as Jordan Hatwal in the comedy series Avenue 5, starring Hugh Laurie.

In 2020, Patel appeared in the film Tenet as Mahir, a fixer who initially helps Neil and the protagonist in their plot to steal the painting from the Oslo airport.

[32] Patel appears in the 2021 Netflix film Don't Look Up, portraying Phillip Kaj, the unscrupulous journalist dating the astronomer, Jennifer Lawrence's Kate Dibiasky, who is responsible for detecting the movie's comet.