The first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at Langley Research Center, Vaughan became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949 and was later officially promoted to supervisor. She worked as a human computer and programmer for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and NASA at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
During her 28-year career, Vaughan helped prepare her team for the transition to electronic computing by teaching herself and her staff the Fortran programming language in the early 1960s. She later headed the programming section of the Analysis and Computation Division at Langley.
Vaughan is one of the women featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's 2016 history "Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race," which was also adapted as a biographical film that same year. In 2019, she received the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously.
