Global Travel, Expense & Corporate Card Program Lead

The role

The Global Travel, Expense & Corporate Card Program Lead owns the end-to-end global operating model for employee travel, expenses, and corporate cards. This role is responsible for transforming fragmented, transactional processes into a governed, auditable, and scalable program that balances financial control, compliance, duty of care, ESG objectives, and employee experience.

The role has global scope from day one and is accountable for policy outcomes, approval architecture, systems design, data integrity, risk management, and performance measurement. Transactional execution is performed by a small team of administrators; this role designs the rules, controls, and governance they operate within.

Your responsibilities will include:

Global Policy & Approval Governance

• Own the global Travel, Expense, and Corporate Card policy framework, including global standards and country-specific addenda.
• Design and maintain the approval architecture, including:
  • Approval layers and routing logic
  • Auto-approval and risk-based thresholds
  • Escalation paths for exceptions and urgent cases
• Own the exceptions regime, ensuring every out-of-policy event is documented, approved, traceable, and auditable.
• Drive policy clarity and enforcement through system configuration, not manual review.

Travel Program Governance & Trip Integrity

• Own governance of all business travel, regardless of booking channel.
• Define and enforce mandatory capture and linkage of:
  • Airline PNRs
  • Hotel CNRs
  • Trip identifiers across booking, expense, and card transactions
• Ensure no reimbursement or corporate card settlement occurs without a valid trip reference, unless approved through a defined exception process.
• Govern handling of modified, cancelled, and partially completed trips.

Duty of Care, Risk & Traveler Protection

• Own the design and governance of the global duty-of-care operating model in partnership with Security, HR, and Legal.
• Ensure reliable traveler visibility through booking and trip data.
• Define and maintain escalation models for:
  • High-risk destinations
  • Travel disruptions and emergencies
  • Crisis response and executive notification
• Maintain a documented travel disruption and emergency runbook.

Travel Insurance, SOS & Medical Compliance

• Own governance of the global travel insurance model, including coverage standards, eligibility, and alignment with corporate card benefits where applicable.
• Own the SOS / emergency assistance service model, ensuring:
  • Vendor integration
  • Traveler data feeds
  • Clear activation and escalation rules
• Govern medical, vaccination, and health entry requirements by:
  • Defining compliance triggers
  • Embedding checks into the travel process
  • Ensuring documentation confirmation without storing sensitive medical data
• Partner with HR, Payroll, and external providers on compliance orchestration (not legal filing).

Corporate Card Program Strategy & Governance

• Own corporate card policy, eligibility, limits, and usage rules globally.
• Define controls for merchant categories, travel vs non-travel spend, and exception handling.
• Ensure mandatory linkage between corporate card transactions, trip records, and expense submissions.
• Define escalation and remediation for misuse and repeated non-compliance.

Financial Stewardship & Expense Integrity

• Own the design of the expense lifecycle, including:
  • Accrual logic and materiality thresholds
  • Late submission handling
  • Alignment with payroll on taxable vs non-taxable treatment
• Reduce manual journal entries, reconciliations, and close-cycle risk related to T&E.
• Support audits by ensuring expense, card, and travel data is complete, consistent, and defensible.

Systems, Automation & Data Governance

• Act as product owner for the T&E systems landscape, including:
  • Travel booking tools
  • Expense management tools
  • Corporate card feeds
  • ERP integrations
• Own governance of T&E-related master data, including employee attributes, cost centers, entities, projects/trips, and merchant mappings.
• Define validation rules, correction workflows, and data lineage from booking through accounting.
• Drive automation and retire legacy or manual processes.

ESG & Responsible Travel

• Integrate ESG objectives into the travel operating model through enforceable rules and measurable outcomes.
• Define and govern responsible travel levers (e.g., modal preferences, default lower-emission options where feasible).
• Own ESG travel metrics and ensure they are reviewed as part of governance, not treated as reporting-only.

Performance Management & Governance Cadence

• Design and own the global KPI framework across:
  • Cost and efficiency
  • Policy compliance
  • Operational performance
  • Duty of care and risk
  • Corporate card usage
  • ESG
• Run a governance cadence that produces decisions:
  • Monthly operational reviews
  • Quarterly executive readouts
  • Annual policy and planning refresh

Team Leadership

• Lead a small global team of senior administrators and/or junior processors.
• Set standards for quality, throughput, documentation, and escalation.
• Ensure the program does not rely on a single individual to function.

We expect you to have:

• 10+ years of experience in finance operations, travel and expense programs, or related governance roles.
• Proven experience owning or designing global T&E and/or corporate card programs.
• Strong understanding of financial controls, audit requirements, and multi-country complexity.
• Hands-on experience with travel, expense, and ERP systems and integrations.
• Demonstrated ability to operate through influence across Finance, HR, Security, and Procurement.

It will be an added bonus if you have:

• Experience in hyper-growth or multi-entity global environments.
• Exposure to duty-of-care programs, travel risk management, or global mobility coordination.
• Strong data and systems orientation.

Competencies & Behavioral Traits

• Ownership-driven and outcome-focused
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity
• Pragmatic, systems-oriented problem solver
• Balances empathy with enforcement
• Thinks in operating models, not transactions