After some research positions at the University of Tartu, he was elected, in 2002, aged 28, to a full professorship and chair in Public Management and European Studies at TUT's Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance (as it is now called), which he subsequently headed for ten years, 2004-2014.

Kattel is one of the main protagonists of the Estonian innovation strategy and policy (especially as concerns Biotechnology and ICT); he was a member of the Innovation Policy Council, Research and Development Council of the Republic of Estonia, as well as a member of the Estonian Biotechnology Expert Group of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Internationally, Kattel has worked mostly as a consultant for the UNDP (e.g. national development plans of Moldova and Kazakhstan).

Between 2002 and 2006, Kattel was also Senior Research Fellow at Estonia's leading public policy think-tank, PRAXIS.

Kattel was a founding board member of ETAG, Estonia's new grant-making institution for science funding.