Kaling first gained recognition for playing Kelly Kapoor in the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), on which she also worked as a writer.

She gained wider attention for creating, producing and playing the title role in the Fox/Hulu sitcom The Mindy Project (2012–2017).

[5] Her film career includes voice roles in Despicable Me (2010), Wreck-It Ralph (2012), and Inside Out (2015) as well as live action roles in No Strings Attached (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Late Night (2019), the last of which she also wrote and produced.

[13][14][15] Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name,[16] but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Bengal.

[4] She said one of her worst job experiences was as a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show.

Time magazine named it one of their "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year", and it was "a surprise hit" at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival.

[4] Initially, Withers and Kaling had, "for their own entertainment, mockingly pretended to be the best friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck; that pretending spawned Matt & Ben, the goofy play that reimagined how Damon and Affleck came to write the movie Good Will Hunting.

"[4] Kaling wrote a blog, Things I've Bought That I Love,[4] which reemerged on her website on September 29, 2011.

[20] Her TV appearances include a 2005 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing Richard Lewis's assistant.

She is featured on the CD Comedy Death-Ray and guest-wrote parts of an episode of Saturday Night Live in April 2006.

In 2007, she had a small part in License to Wed alongside fellow Office actors John Krasinski, Angela Kinsey, and Brian Baumgartner.

[30] Her Universal Television contract included a development deal for a new show (eventually titled The Mindy Project), in which she appeared as an actress and contributed as a writer.

Kaling and her fellow writers and producers of The Office were nominated five consecutive times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.

In 2018, she played Mrs. Who in A Wrinkle in Time, the live-action Disney adaptation of the novel, and starred alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Awkwafina and Rihanna in Ocean's 8, the all-female version of Ocean's Eleven.

[42] It premiered on Netflix on April 27, 2020, and is about an Indian American high school student, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, dealing with the death of her father.

[45][46] In February 2021, HBO Max announced they had ordered the adult-oriented Scooby-Doo spin-off series Velma, with Kaling as executive producer as well as voicing the titular character.

[50][51][52] Velma's fan reception was even more polarizing and got overwhelming negative reviews due to the humor and criticized its meta storytelling, characterization, writing, and departures from the traditional Scooby-Doo format.

[57][58][59] That year, she was appointed as a board member along with historian June Li and Young Yang Chung for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art.

[72] On June 10, 2018, she received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

[38] In March 2023, Kaling was awarded the 2021 National Medal of Arts from the US president Joe Biden in the White House.