He joined the Department of National Archives as an Assistant Archivist in 1970. In 1974, he was awarded an Open Scholarship by the Italian Government under the technical cooperation program to specialise in Conservation and Administration of Archives. In 1975, he received the Post-graduate Specialization Certificate in Conservation and Administration of Archives from the University of Padua, Italy. He served as a UNESCO Consultant on Records and Archives Management of the PGI and was invited to undertake a study on the retrieval of scientific and technical information in transactional files in government records and archives. This consultant study was published by UNESCO in 1984 in English, with translations into Spanish and French. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1983 by the Academy of Sciences, Umman, Philadelphia, for his contributions to the field of Records and Archives Management. Some of his publications include An Introduction to the National Archives of Sri Lanka (1978), 1848 Rebellion in Ceylon (1982), The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka (1985), and Principles of Reprography (1987). He has contributed many articles, both in English and Sinhala, in the fields of the history of Sri Lanka, conservation and management of archives, reprography, and Sri Lankan biographies. He was appointed as the Director of the National Archives on 01.01.1990 and served in this position for 14 years until 18.01.2002..