Sood was an officer of the Indian Postal Service (IPoS) before he joined the intelligence organisation R&AW and later served as its secretary from 2000 to 2003.

[2] Sood served as the head of R&AW after taking over from A.S. Dulat from 2000 to 2003 during the period when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India.

[8] As of 2019, Sood has been acting as an advisor to the Observer Research Foundation, an independent public policy think tank in New Delhi.

"[14] When it comes to China-Pakistan links, Sood is of the opinion that China takes actions such as supporting Pakistan in the UNSC in relation to Masood Azhar because of fear of retaliation from Islamic groups in Xinjiang (an autonomous region in China which partly borders Pakistan) other than of course protecting their interests in Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan in relation to CPEC.

"[16] In 2018 Sood wrote, The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief's Insights into Espionage, published by Penguin Viking.

[18][19] The book, which is divided into three concept related sections that are titled as "Tradecraft", "Inside Intelligence" and "What Lies Ahead", covers espionage during the two world wars, secret societies, psychological warfare in India, KGB and CIA interference in Indian politics, Pakistan and ISI, as well as intelligence failures in the world such as the 9/11 attacks and the 26/11 attacks among other things.