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Salary: USD 105,000 - 132,000 / annual
CHAOS Industries, a defense technology company founded in 2022 and backed by $1B in funding from top-tier investors (8VC, Accel, Valor Equity Partners), is seeking a Travel Manager to own the travel function end-to-end. The company operates across five global offices (Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, London) and serves warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams with advanced defense systems.
This role sits within Finance, reporting to the Controller, and serves as the central hub for all corporate travel operations. You will manage complex, multi-leg international itineraries for engineers, program teams, and field personnel traveling to high-risk regions with elevated security, health, and geopolitical challenges.
Key responsibilities include:
**Travel Platform Ownership (Navan):** Serve as system administrator for the corporate travel platform, managing user provisioning, policy configuration, approval workflows, cost-center mapping, and integrations with expense and accounting systems. Lead the completion of the Navan migration and drive company-wide adoption. Maintain preferred vendor programs and negotiated rates with airlines, hotels, and ground transportation. Own reporting on travel spend, policy compliance, and vendor performance, identifying cost-saving opportunities.
**Traveler Support & Complex Itineraries:** Act as the primary point of contact for travel questions, changes, and disruptions, including after-hours escalation for travelers in transit. Plan and book complex multi-leg international itineraries to remote or high-risk locations with limited commercial options. Coordinate visas, entry requirements, vaccinations, and country-specific documentation; track passport and visa expirations for frequent travelers. Partner with program and field teams on advance planning for deployments, test events, and customer site visits.
**Duty of Care & Risk Management:** Build and maintain the duty-of-care program including traveler tracking, pre-trip risk briefings, check-in protocols, and emergency response procedures. Coordinate with Security, IT, and external providers (travel security, medical evacuation, insurance) for employees traveling to hostile or sanctioned regions. Ensure travel processes account for export control and device-handling requirements. Monitor advisories and events affecting travelers and proactively adjust plans.
**Policy & Process:** Own the corporate travel policy—drafting, updating, communicating, and enforcing it for a fast-moving engineering organization. Design approval and exception workflows balancing traveler flexibility with cost and risk control. Support the Accounting team on travel-related close activities, accruals, and reconciliations with the expense platform.
Travel is occasional (less than 10%), primarily to CHAOS offices and vendor meetings. The role requires availability for traveler emergencies outside normal business hours on a rotating or as-needed basis.
**Requirements:**
- Bachelor's degree in business, hospitality, international affairs, or related field, or equivalent work experience
- Hands-on experience administering a corporate travel platform (Navan, Concur, Egencia, or similar), including policy configuration and approval workflows
- Demonstrated experience booking and supporting complex international itineraries, including travel to high-risk or logistically difficult regions
- Working knowledge of duty-of-care practices, traveler risk management, and emergency response coordination
- Ability to navigate visa and entry requirements quickly and accurately under time pressure
- Experience building travel spend and compliance reporting and explaining it to a non-finance audience
- Strong service orientation with judgment to enforce policy without becoming a bottleneck
- Willingness to be reachable for traveler emergencies outside normal business hours
**Preferred Requirements:**
- Experience in defense, aerospace, government contracting, energy, NGO, or another industry with frequent travel to high-risk regions
- Navan administration experience specifically, including platform migration or initial rollout
- Experience supporting travel for personnel operating under export control regimes (ITAR/EAR) or holding security clearances
- Experience with Ramp or similar expense platform and its integration with travel tools
- Vendor negotiation experience with airlines, hotel chains, or travel management companies
