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Travel Manager

El Segundo, California, United States

CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are 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. 

CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.

Role Overview:

CHAOS is scaling quickly, and so is our 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. Today that burden falls on individual travelers and their teams. We are hiring a Travel Manager to own the travel function end to end: administering our travel platform (Navan), 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.

This 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 our Navan rollout, the corporate travel policy, our preferred-vendor programs, and the emergency response playbook for travelers in high-risk locations. The right person is equally comfortable rebooking a stranded traveler on short notice and walking leadership through travel spend trends.


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 our 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 our 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 the 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.

Minimum Requirements:

  • Minimum education: 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.

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 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.

Why CHAOS?

  • Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
  • Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
  • Our Perks: Free daily lunch while you're working onsite, fully-stocked kitchen, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
  • Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
  • Team Growth: 500+ employees and counting across 5 global offices
Salary Range: $105,000 - $132,000

The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations. 

 

Recruiting Agencies: CHAOS Industries does not accept unsolicited resumes or outreach. Unsolicited submissions will not be reviewed or compensated.

 

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Please note this position does not necessarily require eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance. 

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EXPORT CONTROLS - This position may require access to information and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls. Your responses to the questions below will be used solely to determine your eligibility under U.S. law to receive information and materials subject to U.S. export controls.

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