[1][2] Khatter had his first leading role in Majid Majidi's drama Beyond the Clouds (2017), in which his performance as a drug dealer won him the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut.

[10] Reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young wrote that Khatter's "noteworthy screen charisma promises well for his future career".

[12][13] Khatter next played the lead role in Shashank Khaitan's romantic drama Dhadak (2018), a remake of the Marathi film Sairat (2016), co-starring newcomer Janhvi Kapoor.

Uday Bhatia of Mint criticized Dhadak for lacking the depth of the original film, but found "a soulfulness to [Khatter] that's at odds with Hindi cinema's current penchant for bratty, hyperactive onscreen male personas".

[18][19] In 2020, Khatter starred in the British miniseries A Suitable Boy, Mira Nair's adaptation of Vikram Seth's novel of the same name, in which he was paired opposite Tabu.

[23] That same year, he starred alongside Ananya Panday in the action film Khaali Peeli, which due to COVID-19 pandemic was released digitally on Zee Plex.

[25][26] Reviewers were generally unimpressed with the picture,[27] but Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV thought that the "charm and spunk" that Khatter brought to his comic role enabled him to "[walk] away with the film".

"[33] In 2024, Khatter featured alongside an ensemble cast in The Perfect Couple, an American Netflix limited series based on Elin Hilderbrand's mystery novel of the same name.