Bhattacharyya joined the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG), Mumbai in 1978. She worked with the group of KC Yeh at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign during 1986-87 and during 1998–2000 she was a Senior NRC Resident Research Associate at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Massachusetts, USA. She was the Director of IIG during 2005–2010. Currently, she is an Emeritus Scientist at IIG.