Kittel received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1941 under his advisor Gregory Breit. Before being promoted to professor of physics at UC Berkeley in 1951, Kittel held several other positions. He worked for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory from 1940 to 1942, was a research physicist in the US Navy until 1945, worked at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT from 1945 to 1947 and at Bell Labs from 1947 to 1951, and was a visiting associate professor at UC Berkeley from 1950 until his promotion.