Senior Travel Specialist

Senior Travel Specialist

• Job post location(s): Hyderabad

Your opportunity

As the Sr Specialist in the Travel team, you’ll support the Travel team in functions comprising global employee Travel and Expense management at Hyderabad. Managing compliance with Travel and Expense policy, Corporate Card/P-Card policy, working on all change management projects on Travel, Expense, and Card programmes. You’ll report to the Manager, Travel. Must be flexible to work in a dynamic, 24/7 environment to support the global, round-the-clock nature of the travel industry

What you’ll do

• Possess comprehensive knowledge of Travel, Expense, and Corporate Card programs, and have worked on these areas in past roles.
• Corporate Card Administration: Oversee end-to-end card lifecycle processing, including receiving and evaluating new card applications, issuing cards, managing credit limit adjustments, and cancelling existing cards for offboarded or ineligible employees.
• Payment Batches & Manual Processing: Execute payment batches and handle expense reimbursements for manual paid countries, ensuring compliant, accurate, and timely disbursements across non-automated regions.
• Reconciliations: Perform regular financial reconciliations for corporate credit card accounts, manual country expense payments, and vendor balances, resolving discrepancies with speed and precision.
• Vendor & Contract Negotiations: Partner with strategic partners to lead commercial negotiations for corporate contracts with major airlines, hotel chains, and travel service providers to secure preferred corporate rates and benefits.
• Timely review and approval of all employee travel requests related to hotels and transportation, in line with approved policy.
• Track queries on the Navan travel group and respond timely for all open queries during the respective work shift.
• Proficiently understand and navigate systems such as Navan, Coupa, NetSuite, Workday, Bank Integration, and Card feed programs.
• Ensure internal customer focus in getting the SLAs achieved across all requests from employees for hotel and airfare bookings and reimburse their claims timely.
• Manage financial close-related activities, including accruals, T&E schedules, and month-end reconciliations.
• Review team tasks, identify delays, and provide solutions for timely completion.
• Collaborate with the Global Process Owner, manage approvals, and understand statutory requirements and legalities.
• Prepare and maintain up-to-date process documentation, emphasizing continuous improvement.
• Contribute to ongoing projects by actively participating in testing activities and engaging with individuals across the employee life cycle.

This role requires

• 7+ years of experience in managing Travel, Expense, and Corporate Card programs within a global matrix organization.
• Hands-on experience with end-to-end Corporate Card processing, including issuing new cards, managing card limits, offboarding/cancelling cards, and performing detailed account reconciliations.
• Proven track record of conducting vendor negotiations with airlines, hotel chains, and corporate travel suppliers to secure competitive rates and corporate terms.
• Strong expertise in global payment operations, specifically executing manual country payment batches, local disbursement handling, and cross-border expense processing.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field.
• Demonstrated expertise in process analysis, documentation, financial reconciliations, and process improvement/automation.
• Strong communication, relationship building, influencing, persuasion, presentation, and conflict resolution skills.
• Consistently demonstrates high integrity combined with good business judgment.
• Absolute integrity of internal controls over all finance/accounting activities that can affect the completeness and accuracy of financial reporting.
• Time sensitive on all deliverables and available to handle seasonal variations in functional requirements.
• High attention to detail with the ability to present/articulate analytical results and facilitate decision-making

Bonus points if you have

• Experience in working in travel teams in large organizations in the SAAS space
• Experience in managing global payment batches and travel deliverables across multiple international time zones.