How Ayesha Sharafi Went From Chemical Engineering to the UAE’s Hope Probe

After the UAE’s Hope Probe separated from its launch rocket, it had to make its own course corrections. Later it needed to slow down enough to enter orbit around Mars. Both jobs depended on propulsion aboard the spacecraft. Ayesha Sharafi, an Emirati engineer who had studied chemical engineering at the American University of Sharjah, led the design and development of that propulsion system, according to her August 2020 interview with Khaleej Times. She had started at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai through its Advanced Aerial Systems Programme. Ayesha Sharafi’s interview with Khaleej Times

Sharafi recalled being fascinated by the stars while finding it hard to imagine making a career in space. Her route offers a way to think about entering technology work in the UAE. Start with the engineering problem a team has to solve and identify which skills from your degree could help. Then look for a first assignment that puts your work in front of people who can review it and gives you a chance to revise it. The most informative question about a placement is what a teammate will be able to do with the work you produce.

How a chemical engineering degree connects to a spacecraft

Sharafi’s degree was in chemical engineering. Her later work was on a system that had to store propellant and deliver thrust when the spacecraft needed it. In the Emirates Mars Mission technical paper, the mission team describes Hope as having a pressure-regulated hydrazine monopropellant propulsion system. The point for a student exploring the field is how recognisable some of the underlying questions can be. How does a fluid behave under pressure? How do you measure what is happening? Which assumptions still hold when the hardware moves from a controlled test into a more demanding environment? Emirates Mars Mission technical paper, spacecraft design section

The same paper describes a spacecraft with electrical power, flight software, thermal control, communications and other systems. A decision about a component may affect what another team has to fit, measure or command. For a graduate who has only seen their part of a problem in coursework, that is a different kind of responsibility. The drawing, analysis or test result becomes part of a decision made by other people. An engineer has to show them which inputs were assumed, which were measured and where the results stop applying. Emirates Mars Mission technical paper, spacecraft architecture section

That is a useful way to read a UAE job description outside the most obvious discipline for your degree. Look through the title for the work underneath. A mechanical engineering graduate might recognise a test fixture problem in a robotics role. An electrical engineering graduate might recognise an instrumentation problem in a manufacturing team. A computer engineering graduate might find a route through software that needs to interact with sensors. The practical question is whether you can point to work you have already done that resembles one part of the job and explain what you would need to learn next.

What Sharafi’s early route can tell a graduate

The public record gives two points in Sharafi’s progression. She started with MBRSC’s Advanced Aerial Systems Programme and was a senior propulsion engineer by the time she spoke to Khaleej Times in 2020. In a separate pre-launch interview, she described Hope’s development as encompassing design, development, manufacturing and testing. That span is useful to a new engineer because jobs with similar titles can sit at very different points in a programme. A team still defining a system may spend much of its time resolving requirements. A team preparing for a test may need help making measurements repeatable and recording which version of the system was tested. Sharafi’s pre-launch interview with Euronews

The verified Hope Mars Mission account marked the UAE’s launch day in July 2020 with a video that shows a UAE flag beside an MBRSC-branded dish antenna.

Early-career applicants can ask a team where it is in that cycle. Then ask where a junior engineer’s work enters it. A placement might involve preparing data for a design discussion or reproducing a problem seen during an earlier test. Both can build judgement if the engineer understands what question the work is meant to answer, gets access to the inputs and can attend the review where the results are used. Without that last step, an intern may leave with a completed assignment and little sense of how the team assessed it.

The historical account of Sharafi’s career gives a direction to explore. Candidates need a separate check for what is open to them today. For example, MBRSC’s 2025 Research Experience for Undergraduates was an eight-week summer programme for eligible Emirati STEM students, with mentorship and a preparation camp. That intake shows what a research placement can look like. Its dates and eligibility belong to the 2025 cohort. Use the organiser’s current notice for a later intake before committing time to an application. MBRSC’s 2025 undergraduate research announcement

Choose a first project someone else can review

Imagine an engineering student applying to a Dubai team that works with sensors. The student has helped build a temperature logger in a university lab. A portfolio that shows a photograph and a chart leaves the reader with questions. Where was the reference measurement taken? Did moving the sensor change the reading? Were missing samples visible in the data? A stronger account describes one problem the student took responsibility for, the evidence they collected and one change they made because of what the evidence showed. It can fit on a page with a diagram and a small table of results.

That project also gives the interviewer a way to see where the student needs help. Perhaps they can write a reliable script but have little experience deciding what a useful test would look like. Perhaps they can describe an experiment clearly but have never had a teammate reproduce it. A junior role can make either gap manageable if the team explains the task, assigns a reviewer and expects the first version to change. The candidate learns where to invest effort before promising a finished result.

The same approach works for a student who has mainly done group assignments. Describe the team’s objective briefly, then show your part. If you maintained the test log, describe how you checked that different team members recorded conditions in the same way. If you wrote the analysis, explain which assumptions a reviewer asked you to revisit. A hiring manager can ask much better questions about a decision you made than about a long list of tools you used. Where a project belongs to an employer or a lab, use only material you are authorised to share. You can show the same reasoning on an independent example with public or synthetic data.

Ask how the team handles the first review

An early assignment on a hardware or software team often starts with a question small enough for the new engineer to investigate. In a hypothetical lab project, two runs of a logging script report slightly different times for the same signal. One useful first contribution would be to make the discrepancy reproducible. Record the versions of the script and inputs, show the difference consistently and separate observations from guesses about the cause. A senior teammate can use that record to decide which explanation is worth testing. The junior engineer can see how a finding gets from a notebook into work another person can pick up.

Ask the hiring manager to describe a comparable task from the team’s own work at a level they can discuss publicly. Who defines the acceptance criteria? What does the reviewer look at? When can a junior engineer ask for a second opinion? An answer such as reviewing a short test record at the end of the first week gives you a clearer view than a broad assurance that the team is collaborative. It also lets you ask whether you will be able to amend the work after the review, when much of the learning takes place.

The assignment should fit the access you will actually have. For example, an intern who can see a public dataset may be able to write a check and present the results within a short placement. A task that depends on special access or a test rig may need setup before the same intern can start. Ask what the team prepares before you arrive and which useful work you can do while waiting. A small piece of work with available inputs and a known reviewer can reveal more about the job than a larger assignment that spends most of the placement in a queue.

Compare offers by the work you will be able to explain

Suppose one placement offers a broad rotation through a technology organisation and another offers a fixed assignment with a test team. The rotation could help you discover where your interests and degree fit. To get value from it, ask which teams you will visit and whether each visit includes a task or a chance to observe a review. The test placement could give you a deeper example for your next application. Ask which part of the work a junior person owns and how the team will tell you when that work is good enough to use.

Before deciding, imagine explaining the placement at a later interview. Which questions could you answer about a project? You may be able to describe how you traced a discrepancy, how your results changed when you altered an assumption or how a teammate used your record to repeat a test. Try to identify two such examples the role would give you a reasonable opportunity to develop. If the work cannot be disclosed, ask whether you can discuss the skills and responsibilities in general terms. Any example you prepare for public use can draw from a separate project you own.

For an employer building a UAE graduate route, the same comparison points to how to structure the work. Choose assignments with a defined question and a named person who will use the result. Set review dates that leave time for revision. When the placement ends, give the candidate feedback on their technical work and on how clearly another person could follow it. That helps a graduate understand which responsibility they are ready to take on next and gives the team a basis for making that decision.

Sharafi’s story starts with a degree in Sharjah and a role at a Dubai centre that was developing advanced systems. Her later work on Hope shows how far a discipline can travel when a team needs its underlying skills. For a student or graduate deciding where to start in the UAE, take one project you can explain in detail and find a role that will put a similar piece of work through a real engineering review. What you learn in that review will give you a better question to ask about the next role.