Manager - Travel & Immigration - Human Capital

We are looking for a Travel Manager to join our team in Hyderabad and own the firm’s travel function end to end—policy, supplier negotiations, platform and vendor management, ticketing oversight, and the billing and reporting that sit behind it. This is a hands-on, single-owner role for someone who can run day-to-day travel operations reliably while also treating travel as a spend category to be benchmarked, negotiated, and continuously improved. The Immigration and travel team manages the firm’s global needs, by liaising with employees for their visa, travel and permanent residency processes across entities while coordinating with embassies, consulates, travel vendors and external immigration consultants. You will own and monitor the firmwide travel policy—covering class-of-travel entitlements, advance-booking windows, rate caps, per diems, approval thresholds, and the exception process—and benchmark it against peers and published market data, comparing policy terms, negotiated rates, service fees, and traveler entitlements to recommend changes with a clear cost and traveler-experience rationale. You will run periodic corporate fare and hotel programme negotiations with airlines, hotels, and ground-support providers, securing discounted fares, corporate rate codes, volume-based rebates, and soft benefits such as upgrades, lounge access, waived change fees, and last-room availability, and manage the firm’s travel vendors and booking platform. You will oversee pricing and ticketing—the issuance, reissuance, cancellation, and refund of tickets, including turnaround times and the accuracy of routing, fare rules, and traveler details. You will track unused tickets, credit shells, and refunds due from airlines and hotels to ensure they are applied or recovered before they expire, a common source of leakage, and review booking lead times and change patterns to address the behaviors that drive avoidable cost. You will also verify billing and handle reconciliation, accounting, and controls, and analyze the firm’s travel patterns—spend against budget, savings realized against negotiated rates, compliance rate, cost per trip, average ticket price, and supplier performance—while building the annual travel budget and forecast with Finance and explaining variances. Finally, you will manage stakeholders and communication, coordinating group and event travel for offsites, recruiting events, and large internal meetings, and working with the firm’s other offices and global travel counterparts to keep terms, suppliers, and the traveler experience consistent where it makes sense. Education • A bachelor’s degree in any discipline. • An MBA or a postgraduate qualification in travel and tourism, hospitality, supply chain, or finance is an advantage. • IATA/UFTAA certification or GDS certification (Amadeus, Sabre, or Galileo) is an advantage. Experience • Roughly ten years of relevant experience in corporate travel—either in-house at a large corporate, ideally a multinational or financial services firm, or in the travel industry (travel management company or online travel platform) servicing large corporate accounts. • At least three to four years owning a travel program end to end, rather than executing bookings within someone else’s program. • A demonstrable track record of negotiating airline and hotel agreements and delivering measurable, evidenced savings. • Hands-on experience with an online booking and expense platform (for example, SAP Concur, Navan, or a comparable tool) and working familiarity with a GDS. • Practical knowledge of domestic and international ticketing, fare construction and fare rules. • Experience of invoice verification and reconciliation, and of working with Finance on accruals, cost allocation, and audit queries. Skills • Strong analytical skills • Strong written and verbal communication skills • Negotiation and commercial judgement • High attention to detail • Ownership and responsiveness