Travel Manager

About the role

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $1 billion in funding from investors including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners, and is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, and London.

CHAOS is scaling quickly, and so is travel. Engineers, program teams, and field personnel are regularly on complex, multi-leg international itineraries, often to regions with elevated security, health, and geopolitical risk. This Travel Manager role owns the travel function end to end: administering the Navan travel platform, supporting travelers before and during trips, building the duty-of-care program that keeps people safe in difficult places, and controlling travel spend without slowing the company down. The role sits in Finance and reports to the Controller, working day to day with Security, IT, People, and the program teams who travel most. You will own the completion of the Navan rollout, the corporate travel policy, preferred-vendor programs, and the emergency response playbook for travelers in high-risk locations.

Responsibilities

Travel platform ownership (Navan)

• Serve as system administrator for Navan: user provisioning, policy configuration, approval workflows, cost-center and department mapping, and integration with expense and accounting systems.
• Lead completion of the Navan migration and drive adoption across the company.
• Maintain preferred vendor programs, negotiated rates, and corporate accounts with airlines, hotels, and ground transportation providers.
• Own reporting on travel spend, policy compliance, and vendor performance; identify and recommend savings opportunities.

Traveler support and 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, including travel 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 and risk

• Build and maintain the duty-of-care program: traveler tracking, pre-trip risk briefings, check-in protocols, and emergency response procedures.
• Coordinate with Security, IT, and outside providers (travel security, medical evacuation, insurance) to support employees traveling to hostile or sanctioned regions.
• Ensure travel processes account for export control and device-handling requirements, working with Security and Compliance on applicable rules.
• Monitor advisories and events that may affect travelers and proactively adjust plans.

Policy and process

• Own the corporate travel policy: draft, update, communicate, and enforce it in a way that works for a fast-moving engineering organization.
• Design approval and exception workflows that balance traveler flexibility with cost and risk control.
• Support the Accounting team on travel-related close activities, accruals, and reconciliations with the expense platform.

Travel: occasional (less than 10%), primarily to CHAOS offices and vendor meetings. Physical demands: standard office environment; must be reachable for traveler emergencies outside normal business hours on a rotating or as-needed basis.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, hospitality, international affairs, or another 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 the judgment to enforce policy without becoming a bottleneck.
• Willingness to be reachable for traveler emergencies outside normal business hours.

Qualifications

• Experience in defense, aerospace, government contracting, energy, NGO, or another industry with frequent travel to high-risk regions.
• Navan administration experience specifically, including a platform migration or initial rollout.
• Experience supporting travel for personnel operating under export control regimes (e.g., ITAR/EAR) or holding security clearances.
• Experience with Ramp or a similar expense platform and its integration with travel tools.
• Vendor negotiation experience with airlines, hotel chains, or travel management companies.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
• 401k with 50% company match up to 6% of pay
• FSA, HSA, life insurance
• Free daily lunch while working onsite, fully-stocked kitchen
• Unlimited PTO, casual dress code
• Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and annual bonuses (coming soon)
• Team growth: 500+ employees across 5 global offices

Pay

Salary range: $105,000 - $132,000 base compensation. The stated range reflects only targeted base compensation and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. Actual salary offer may vary based on work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.