Pothineni continued to established himself as a leading man with critical and commercial successes such as Maska (2009), Kandireega (2011), Pandaga Chesko (2015), Nenu Sailaja (2016), Hello Guru Prema Kosame (2018), iSmart Shankar (2019), and Red (2021).

Pothineni first appeared in Tamil language short film Adayaalam (2002) where he played an 18-year old drug addict.

He then appeared in Ready alongside Genelia D'Souza directed by Srinu Vaitla which was a commercial success.

In the same year, he co-starred alongside Venkatesh in the action comedy Masala, the remake of the Hindi film Bol Bachchan, directed by K. Vijaya Bhaskar and jointly produced by Sravanthi Ravi Kishore and D. Suresh Babu.

While Pandaga Chesko directed by Gopichand Malineni, was a commercial success,[10] Shivam ended up as one of the biggest failures of his career.

[11] In 2016, He had two releases, both produced by his own production house Sri Sravanthi Movies, Nenu Sailaja which was a commercial success[12] and Santosh Srinivas-directed Hyper which was an average at the box office.

[17] Pothineni then starred in Boyapati Srinu's Skanda (2023)[18] opposite Sreeleela to mixed reviews from the critics.