Dr Venkateswara Rao earlier served as the Programme Director, Agni at ASL, Hyderabad, where he guided the building up of a dynamic setup for design, development, production, delivery, flight testing and life cycle management of Agni missile variants. Earlier, as Director, Centre for Advanced Systems, he established new integration and test facilities for missiles. He played a crucial role in configuration design and establishment of integration and storage facilities, and delivered the Agni variants to different regiments as per requirements. Design, planning and operationalization of bases for Agni variants are his other significant contributions. Adoption of automation in integration and testing of missiles production has been another important contribution. He provided critical training to the regiment teams and the Missile Management Organization groups. During his tenure of more than two decades at ASL and DRDL, Hyderabad, Dr. Rao earned a rich experience in all the stages of development of Agni systems. Design and realization of solid rocket motors for Agni and Upper Stage Static Test Facility are to his credit. He immensely contributed towards the integration and testing of solid rocket motors for Agni as well as other missile systems such as ANSP, PJ10, Helina, Astra, LRSAM, etc. As Project Director, Agni-3 & Sites, he played a major role in coordinating with ISRO and SFC, Jagdalpur for processing, integration and static testing of Agni-3 stage I and stage II solid rocket motors, and with the regiment for the delivery of Agni-3 missiles.

During his term at ISRO, Sriharikota from 1987 to 1997, Dr. V V Rao was involved in the integration and static testing of Solid rocket motors for ASLV and PSLV, and also trained in integration of second and fourth stages of PSLV flight vehicle and environmental testing of PSLV and GSLV sub-systems.

Dr. Rao has to his credit, several technical papers published in national and international journals and conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India) and the Aeronautical Society of India. He is serving as a Life Member and Secretary of Indian Institute of Welding and High Energy Materials Society of India, as well as Life Member of Indian Society of Non Destructive Testing, Indian Welding Society and Astronautical Society of India.

Dr. V Venkateswara Rao is the recipient of DRDO award for Path breaking research/Outstanding technology development for successful completion of Agni-3 developmental trials in 2007 and Best performance team award from Chairman, ISRO for successful assembly and static testing of solid rocket motors of PSLV in 1996. He was awarded the Best PhD thesis award by Indian Welding Society in 2010.