From Indian Railways to SpaceX: Who is Sanjeev Sharma, the IIT-Roorkee alumnus and key engineer for Elon Musk’s Starship?

Sanjeev Sharma, a former engineer working for Indian Railways, is now helping develop rockets for SpaceX. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni recently went viral on social media after people shared photos of his LinkedIn profile with cheerful comments like “inspirational” and “amazing.”

A quick look at his profile suggests that Sharma started as a Divisional Mechanical Engineer with Indian Railways after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee. He eventually worked his way up and rose to Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer, a position he retained for 11 years until 2001.

After this, Sharma went on to pursue higher studies and enrolled in the University of Colorado Boulder’s one-year MS program in Mechanical Engineering. After completing his post-graduation,  he secured a place at Seagate Technology, a company known for making digital storage solutions like hard drives and worked there as a Staff Mechanical Engineer for about four and a half years. Sharma worked there for another 5 years as Senior Engineering Manager.

Sanjeev Sharma worked for SpaceX before he joined the company again as a Principal Engineer for Starship Dynamics. (Image Source: LinkedIn/Express Photo)

Also Read | We are not alone? New NASA research suggests possibility of life on Mars

While working for Seagate Technology, Sanjeev Sharma pursued another degree, this time completing an MS in Management of Technology from the University of Minnesota. After his third degree, Sharma joined SpaceX’s Structures Group as a Dynamics Engineer, a position where he “worked on recovery and reuse ability of the first stage booster” for almost 6 years before leaving for a company called Matter Inc, which worked on commercial drone delivery system, for around 3 years and 9 months.

In July 2022, Sanjeev Sharma once again joined SpaceX, but this time as the Principal engineer for Starship Dynamics. To give you a quick recap, Starship is the name of the largest rocket ever made, which Elon Musk says will take humans to Mars someday.