In 2008 Vaughan-Lawlor played the Dauphin in Henry V at the Royal Exchange Manchester for which he received an Ian Charleson Award commendation. For his performance in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui he won the 2009 Irish Times Best Actor Theatre Award. He won the award again in 2014 for Howie the Rookie.
During Love/Hate he continued working on stage in production such as the 2010 West End production of All My Sons directed by Howard Davies. The next year he played Jerry Devine in Davies's production of Juno and the Paycock. In 2013 Vaughan-Lawlor played both the Howie Lee and the Rookie Lee in Mark O'Rowe's Howie the Rookie. Originally written for two actors, O'Rowe re-imagined the play for one actor to play both parts, and directed the production himself for Landmark Theatres. The production opened in Dublin, then toured to Cork, Galway, and the Edinburgh Festival. In 2014 the production was invited to the Barbican Centre London where it played in The Pit for 2 weeks, and then toured to BAM in New York.
In 2013 he appeared in the role of Byrne in fifth episode of the BBC2 crime drama Peaky Blinders. In October 2013, he began filming in Dublin on a three-part political drama Charlie which is based on the life of the late Taoiseach Charles Haughey. He played political spin Doctor P. J. Mara in the drama.
Vaughan-Lawlor played McCabe in Jim Sheridan's movie The Secret Scripture with Rooney Mara and Jack Reynor which filmed in early 2015, and appeared in the 2016 film The Infiltrator with Bryan Cranston and Diane Kruger, directed by Brad Furman.
He recently appeared in the three-part drama Trial of the Century, where he played Patrick Pearse. In July 2016 Vaughan-Lawlor played Michaelis in the BBC's 3-part television adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent.
