Tyler's breakthrough came in 1995, after composing for Frailty (2001). His work on Last Call (2002) earned him an induction into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. william Friedkin, after being impressed by his work on Frailty, called Tyler in to begin composing for The Hunted (2003), which went on to earn Tyler a World Soundtrack Award in 2002 for Best New Film Composer of the Year. Starting in 2003, he began working on big-budget films, including Timeline (2003), Godsend (2004), The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), and Constantine (2005). His score for The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) hit No. 1 on the iTunes Soundtrack sales charts, while his Soundtrack for Children of Dune reached No. 4 on the Amazon.com album charts.. His cues for Children of Dune were used in multiple other theatrical film trailers, including Master and Commander (2003), Sahara (2005), Cinderella Man (2005), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and Star Trek (2009). The track "Summon the Worms" was used as a leader for the Dutch show Peking Express, and in the first leaked promotional reel for The Golden Compass (2007).

Tyler began scoring features shortly after graduating from Harvard. Robert Kraft, who was impressed by Tyler's music, encouraged him to pursue a career in film scoring. He began his career by composing the film score for the independent film Bartender (1997), directed by Gabe Torres. The following year, he and Red Elvises composed the film score for Six-String Samurai (1998).

In 2007, he was hired to compose for Partition (2007), where he had to integrate Indian and Middle Eastern music with orchestral writing. He conducted the orchestral portion of the score with the Hollywood Studio Symphony in Los Angeles.

On September 5, 2011, Tyler announced that he was currently in talks for scoring the 2011 remake of Highlander, as well as pilot episodes for the animated series Transformers: Prime. He went on to score four episodes of the series.

In 2012, Tyler also scored a new version of the fanfare of the Universal Pictures logo, originally composed by Jerry Goldsmith, coinciding with the celebration of the studio's 100th anniversary. The new score added elements such as a choir, a bigger emphasis on the movement of the music underneath and a drum cadence at the end.

In addition to working as a Composer, Tyler also wrote and produced the song "Shell Shocked" with Kill the Noise, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla Sign, Juicy J and Moxie that was released in the summer of 2014 under his Artist name Madsonik. The track went on to peak at No. 2 on the iTunes hip-hop singles charts and has sold over 500,000 copies.

On October 12, 2016, he was hired to write and compose the musical score for the 2017 action-adventure film xXx: Return of Xander Cage. He has also contributed to the Soundtrack by his stage name Madsonik in a collaboration with Tom Morello and Kill The Noise entitled "Divebomb".

His composition for the film Last Call earned him the first of three Emmy nominations, a gold record, and was inducted into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As of November 2017, his films have grossed $12 billion worldwide which puts him in to the top 10 highest-grossing film composers of all time in the category of worldwide box office. Tyler has scored 3 of the top 10 films of all time in global box office.

On March 2, 2018, he announced on Twitter that he had been hired by Formula One to write a brand new theme that was released on March 23.