Travel and Expenses - Senior Manager

The Role

Nscale's employees travel constantly across the UK, US, Europe and APAC, and our footprint keeps growing through new entities and acquisitions.

We're looking for a hands-on leader to own T&E operations end to end. You'll run the team, keep approvals and reimbursements moving, run the corporate card program, apply the policy consistently to everyone, and make sure T&E data is accurate enough for month end, audit and leadership reporting to rely on it. You'll be the point of escalation for T&E so that issues are resolved in your team rather than landing elsewhere in Finance.

What You'll Own

Team leadership

• Lead, hire and develop the T&E team, including the open Analyst roles.
• Set a weekly operating rhythm: queue reviews, quality checks on manual approvals, and a clear view of what is aged and why.
• Plan coverage so that nothing stalls during holidays, absences or peak periods.
• Build the team's capability over time, moving it from purely transactional processing toward exception handling and continuous improvement.

Day-to-day operations and service levels

• Own the expense and card approval queue across all entities, the T&E mailbox, and responses to employee and manager queries.
• Agree and report on service levels for review turnaround, query response and reimbursement timing.
• Coordinate reimbursement runs with Treasury across entities and currencies.
• Make good use of the platform's controls, such as receipt thresholds and category-manager approval groups, so that out-of-policy items are caught before they reach the queue.

Corporate card and purchasing card program

• Run card issuance with the right approvals, along with limits, virtual cards, renewals and cancellations at offboarding.
• Enforce the submission deadline for card transactions, including freezing and unfreezing cards and following up with employees and their managers.
• Govern company and purchasing cards used for business purchases, including a named owner for every card.
• Keep an accurate register of every card, its holder, its limits and its entity.

Policy and enforcement

• Own the global T&E policy and related policies
• Apply the policy consistently at every level, including senior leaders and the assistants who book on their behalf; this needs a calm, firm and well-documented approach.
• Run a clear exception process with defined approvers, a log and monthly reporting.
• Use real booking data to review hotel and travel rate caps by location, and recommend changes where caps are unrealistic or too generous.
• Design role- and location-specific rules where one policy doesn't fit, starting with a deployment travel policy for on-site teams.
• Make sure policies and processes comply with HMRC, IRS and other local tax requirements, including per diems, benefits-in-kind and reimbursement rules.

Month end and controls

• Make sure all T&E spend reaches the general ledger on time and coded correctly, including entity, department and category, before it syncs to NetSuite.
• Work with Accounting so that T&E movements are explainable and the accrual process is documented, complete, and accurate
• Reconcile card statements and travel bookings, including matching Navan bookings to the actual traveler in Payhawk.
• Maintain audit evidence: approval trails, delegate and out-of-office approver reporting, card registers and exception logs.
• Run regular checks for duplicate, fraudulent or non-compliant claims, and support internal and external audits.

Employee and approver data

• Reconcile HRIS against Payhawk and Navan every week for joiners, movers and leavers, and for changes to departments, entities and approvers.
• Work with Finance Systems to automate this data flow and to fix the root causes of recurring errors.

Vendors and platforms

• Manage the day-to-day relationships with Payhawk and Navan: support escalations, service levels, business reviews and product roadmap input.
• Work with Treasury on card funding and travel credit facilities.
• Define business requirements and test changes; Finance Systems owns configuration, integrations and access roles.
• Assess whether the current stack will scale with us, and contribute to renewals and any future platform decisions.

Growth and acquisitions

• Bring the employees, cards and policies of acquired companies onto Nscale's T&E stack, and set up T&E for new entities and countries.
• Partner with the People team so that new joiners are onboarded to T&E from day one, with guidance and FAQs people actually read.

About You

Experience

• 7+ years in travel and expense operations, including leading a team, ideally in a high-growth or multi-entity business.
• Hands-on experience with modern T&E platforms such as Payhawk, Navan, Concur, Expensify, Ramp or Brex, and with running corporate card programs across several entities and currencies.
• A solid understanding of month-end close, including accruals, reconciliations and GL coding; NetSuite experience is a plus.
• Working knowledge of T&E tax treatment and compliance across the UK, US and Europe.
• A track record of applying policy consistently with senior stakeholders, while staying helpful and approachable.

Additional information

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