Travel and Expenses - Senior Manager

About Nscale Nscale is the GPU cloud engineered for AI. We provide cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure for AI start-ups and large enterprise customers. Nscale enables AI-focused companies to achieve superior results by reducing the complexity of AI development. Our GPU cloud bolsters technical capabilities and directly supports strategic business outcomes, including cost management, rapid innovation, and environmental responsibility. We thrive on a culture of relentless innovation, ownership, and accountability, where every team member takes pride in their work and drives it with excellence and urgency. As an Nscaler, you'll build trust through openness and transparency, where everyone is inspired to do their best work. If you join our team, you'll be contributing to building the technology that powers the future. 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. For information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: Here. Nscale does not accept unsolicited candidate submissions from recruitment agencies.