Isro and Department of Space open hiring for 746 posts as staff shortage hits 25-year high

New Delhi: The Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) have thrown open recruitment for 746 posts spanning scientific, technical and administrative cadres. The drive covers apprentices, engineers, technicians, scientific and technical assistants, and several specialist roles, with applications to be submitted online through isro.gov.in.

At the centre of the exercise is the recruitment of 92 scientists and engineers to the “SC” cadre – a Group A gazetted post in Isro’s constituent centres, and a Group A non-gazetted post in the autonomous bodies functioning under the space department. The advertisement, issued on Thursday, lists vacancies across eight engineering and technical disciplines.

Electronics accounts for the largest single share, with 34 posts, followed by mechanical engineering at 26. Computer science has 13 vacancies and civil engineering 10, while electrical engineering, refrigeration and air-conditioning, and architecture make up smaller shares. A single civil engineering post has been earmarked for the Physical Research Laboratory, an autonomous body under the department.

No written test for GATE-qualified candidates

Selection for the scientist and engineer posts will rest on candidates’ scores in the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), rather than a fresh written examination conducted by Isro. This has been the organization’s standard practice for several recruitment cycles now, sparing shortlisted applicants an additional round of testing before they are called for interview.

Applicants require a bachelor’s degree in the relevant engineering discipline with a minimum aggregate of 65% marks, or a CGPA of 6.84 on a 10-point scale. A valid GATE score in the corresponding paper – electronics and communication, mechanical, computer science, civil, electrical, or architecture and planning – is mandatory for each discipline.

The age limit for these posts has been fixed at 28 years, to be reckoned as on August 17, 2026, which is also the last date for submission of applications.

Record staffing gap

This hiring push arrives with the space department carrying its highest vacancy rate in at least a quarter of a century. Government employment data analysed earlier this month showed that 5,632 of the department’s 20,269 sanctioned posts – close to 28%, or nearly three in every 10 – stood vacant at the end of 2025-26, leaving actual staff strength at 14,637 against a sanctioned strength that has barely moved in years.

That marks a steady deterioration. The department employed 17,222 people in 2019-20 against a sanctioned strength of 20,039, and as recently as 2001-02 it had 14,847 staff on its rolls against a much smaller sanctioned strength of 16,423 – meaning today’s workforce is, in absolute terms, little larger than it was 25 years ago, even as the sanctioned establishment has grown by almost a quarter.

Scientific and technical personnel, who make up roughly three-quarters of the department’s total strength, bear the brunt of this shortfall. The gap has opened up precisely as Isro takes on its most demanding slate of missions to date, including the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, the NGLV (next-generation launch vehicle), an Indian space station and follow-on missions to the moon, Mars and Venus.

Exodus of scientific talent

The vacancy numbers have been sharpened by a wave of departures that surfaced in July, when the space deparment issued an internal memorandum restricting how easily its scientists and engineers could resign or take voluntary retirement, as RNA Media had reported. The memo followed reports that more than 100 personnel, several of them working on Gaganyaan and other flagship missions, had quit or sought early exit from the organization in recent months.

Centre directors, who had held delegated authority to clear such requests since 2020, were instructed to route every case to space department headquarters in New Delhi with a formal recommendation, regardless of the applicant’s seniority. Reports at the time put the bulk of the exits at the UR Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, with departures said to include senior figures from the LVM3 rocket programme and specialists tied to the SpaDeX docking experiment.

Analysts tracking the episode have pointed to a widening pay gap with the private space sector – now home to more than 400 startups since India opened the sector in 2020 – as the likeliest driver, compounded by a workforce that had already shrunk by close to 13% between 2021-22 and 2025-26 even as Isro’s budget stayed broadly flat over the same period. Commentators have also flagged workload, limited research freedom, and slow, rules-bound promotion cycles as recurring grievances among those who have left, alongside pay.

Restricting exits may ease the immediate pressure on flagship missions, but it leaves the underlying shortfall untouched. This latest recruitment drive, covering 746 posts and only a fraction of the department’s 5,632 vacancies, is best read as a modest first step towards closing a gap that has been two decades in the making rather than a fix for it.