He has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Barry Jenkins's Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), and Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021).

Britell scored all four seasons, earning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music in 2019.

[1] His scores for the second, third, and fourth seasons of Succession each earned Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series nominations in 2020, 2022, and 2023.

His score for The Underground Railroad was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or Special in 2021.

[8] At school, he was a member of the Signet Society, as well as the instrumental hip-hop group, The Witness Protection Program, in which he played keyboards and synthesizers.

[22] Britell's film composing career continued in 2012 with the scoring of Michele Mitchell's PBS documentary Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?

[27] "My Lord Sunshine", composed by Britell for 12 Years a Slave, was eligible for the 2014 Oscars' Best Original Song list.

[28] The Los Angeles Times said of "My Lord Sunshine": "A work song, a spiritual, a blues lament, a communal statement – 'My Lord Sunshine (Sunrise)' is all of the above and more...[w]hat Britell accomplished is no easy feat, and it's a spiritual that feels and sounds of the era and deftly weaves in religious imagery with the daily horror of the slaves' lives.

[37] In 2015, Britell scored The Seventh Fire, a documentary directed by Jack Pettibone Riccobono and presented by Terrence Malick, which debuted to critical acclaim at the Berlin International Film Festival.

[42] In 2016, Britell scored director Gary Ross's Civil-War era historical drama Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mahershala Ali, and Keri Russell.

[44] Also in 2016, Britell wrote the original score for the critically acclaimed, Best Picture-winning film Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins.

[54] Britell scored Fox Searchlight's tennis biopic Battle of the Sexes, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and released in 2017.

[63] In 2019, Britell worked with American rapper, Pusha T, to create a remix of the main title theme for Succession.

"[65] On February 6, 2019, Britell confirmed he was composing the score for Barry Jenkins's The Underground Railroad, an original series on Amazon based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name.

Britell composed the music for Adam McKay's 2021 film Don't Look Up, including the song "Just Look Up" performed by Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi.