Sue Hoskins apprenticed and was subsequently hired by Dave Bell Associates, a Los Angeles area documentary film production company that produced some of the 1980s America Undercover documentaries for Home Box Office, including Victims Fight Back, Sex and the American Teenager, and Missing Persons Four True Stories, which was picked up as a pilot for NBC. That show grew into what would become the long-running network television series Unsolved Mysteries, where Sue was promoted to editor, and remained for the full twelve year run.

During that time she worked as an editor and sound recordist on the ethnographic documentary Horses of Life and Death (1991), produced by Laura Scheerer Whitney and Janet Hoskins, and several other projects funded by science and education grants. In collaboration with her sister, anthropologist and filmmaker Janet Hoskins, Susan directed and edited the historical documentary The Left Eye of God (2008), which screened at the Vietnamese International Film Festival.

She also edited non-fiction programs for broadcast television Discovery Networks, NBC, CBS, KCET, Lifetime, UPN, HGTV, PAX, TLC and PBS, and recently worked on the California State Park and Claremont art and architecture documentaries. She joined the judging committee for the International Documentary Association in 2018, and continues to edit independent documentaries.