AppZen

AI-powered SaaS for financial process automation

Senior Product Manager - Spend Management, Travel & Expense

Product ManagementPosted on Nov 10

Full-timeSanta Clara, CA, USA$180k - $225k /yr

About the Job

Requirements

At least 5 years of product management experience, including meaningful time focused on corporate travel, travel and expense, spend management, or corporate cards.
Hands-on experience building business-to-business travel or spend management products for mid-market or enterprise organizations.
Strong understanding of the corporate travel ecosystem, including travel management companies, online booking tools, global distribution systems and supplier data, travel policy, and connections between travel, card, and expense data.
Strong understanding of the spend lifecycle, including policy, requests and approvals, transaction capture, categorization, reconciliation, and reporting.
Experience taking at least one travel or spend management product or major capability from concept through production launch.
Familiarity with the market landscape, including SAP Concur, Navan, Amex GBT, Emburse, Ramp, and Brex, and ability to explain where products succeed and lose.
Experience designing for finance leaders, travel managers, approvers, and travelers while balancing control with ease of use.
Ability to prioritize competing customer needs and make build-versus-partner decisions.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills and ability to work effectively across cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

Define the product strategy and roadmap for spend management capabilities, focusing on travel spend across expense, corporate card, and purchasing workflows.
Develop understanding of the travel and spend management market, including competitors, travel management companies, booking platforms, and customer buying criteria, to identify product differentiation opportunities.
Design pre-trip and at-spend controls, including travel requests and approvals, booking policies for airfare class, hotel rate caps and advance-purchase rules, per diems, budgets, and spend limits, to prevent out-of-policy spending.
Connect the trip lifecycle by matching bookings, travel management company data, card transactions, and expense reports into a single trip view, identifying duplicate records, missing receipts, and leakage from bookings outside approved channels.
Define how AI-driven automation supports the spend lifecycle, including transaction categorization, policy violation flagging, anomaly detection for unused tickets and inflated hotel folios, and action recommendations within enterprise governance requirements.
Build travel and spend analytics providing finance and travel leaders real-time, actionable views by traveler, department, supplier, route, and budget to support supplier negotiations and policy optimization.
Own integrations with booking tools, travel management companies, card programs, enterprise resource planning systems, human resources information systems, and procurement systems to ensure accurate and complete spend data flows into AppZen.
Translate global travel policy, multi-entity requirements, value-added tax reclaim, duty of care, and audit requirements into scalable product capabilities rather than one-off implementations.
Partner with Engineering, Design, Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing to take new capabilities from concept through customer adoption, and define success metrics to measure impact.

Desired Qualifications

Background at a travel management company, online booking tool, travel supplier, or travel and expense platform.
Experience applying artificial intelligence or machine learning to finance or travel workflows such as audit, anomaly detection, or classification.
Experience with corporate card programs, virtual cards for travel (lodged or central travel accounts), or card-issuing platforms.
Background in global or multi-entity travel programs involving multiple currencies, value-added tax or goods and services tax reclaim, regional policy, or duty of care.
Experience integrating with enterprise resource planning, human resources information, travel, or procurement systems such as Oracle, SAP, Workday, or NetSuite.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.

Salary Range: 180000 to 225000 (Currency: USD) (Pay period: per-year-salary)

AppZen is the leader in autonomous spend-to-pay software. Its patented artificial intelligence accurately and efficiently processes information from thousands of data sources so that organizations can better understand enterprise spend at scale to make smarter business decisions. It seamlessly integrates with existing accounts payable, expense, and card workflows to read, understand, and make real-time decisions based on your unique spend profile, leading to faster processing times and fewer instances of fraud or wasteful spend. Global enterprises, including one-third of the Fortune 500, use AppZen’s invoice, expense, and card transaction solutions to replace manual finance processes and accelerate the speed and agility of their businesses.

At AppZen, we value candidates who are actively using AI tools to enhance productivity, automate repetitive tasks, and solve problems more efficiently. Across all roles, we are looking for team members who leverage AI in meaningful ways to drive impact in their work.

To learn more, visit us at www.appzen.com.

We're looking for a Senior Product Manager to define how AppZen helps enterprises control, understand, and optimize spend, with a particular focus on travel spend. For most organizations, travel is among the largest and hardest-to-control parts of their spend. It is spread across booking tools, travel management companies (TMCs), corporate cards, and expense reports, and many costs only show up after the trip is over. This role covers the full spend lifecycle: pre-trip approval and policy, booking and in-trip spend, and expense reconciliation and analytics. The goal is to give finance and travel leaders real-time visibility and control without slowing travelers down. We're looking for someone who has built travel or spend management products before, knows the competitive landscape, and can design AI-driven experiences that serve the CFO's office, travel managers, and everyday employees.

What You'll Do:

Define the product strategy and roadmap for AppZen's spend management capabilities, with travel spend as a core focus, across expense, corporate card, and purchasing workflows
Develop a deep understanding of the travel and spend management market, including competitors, TMCs, booking platforms, and customer buying criteria, to identify where AppZen should differentiate
Design pre-trip and at-spend controls, such as travel requests and approvals, booking policy (airfare class, hotel rate caps, advance-purchase rules), per diems, budgets, and spend limits, so that out-of-policy spend is stopped before it happens
Connect the full trip lifecycle by matching bookings, TMC data, card transactions, and expense reports into one view of each trip, catching duplicates, missing receipts, and leakage when travelers book outside approved channels
Define how AI-driven automation extends across the spend lifecycle: categorizing transactions, flagging policy violations, detecting anomalies such as unused tickets and inflated hotel folios, and recommending actions, all within enterprise governance requirements
Build travel and spend analytics that give finance and travel leaders a real-time, actionable view by traveler, department, supplier, route, and budget, supporting supplier negotiations and policy optimization
Own integrations with booking tools, TMCs, card programs, ERPs, HRIS, and procurement systems so spend data flows accurately and completely into AppZen
Translate complex enterprise requirements, such as global travel policy, multi-entity, VAT reclaim, duty of care, and audit, into scalable product capabilities rather than one-off implementations
Partner with Engineering, Design, Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing to take new capabilities from concept through customer adoption, and define success metrics to measure impact

What We're Looking For:

5+ years of product management experience, including meaningful time focused on corporate travel, travel & expense (T&E), spend management, or corporate cards
Hands-on experience building B2B travel or spend management products for mid-market or enterprise organizations
Strong understanding of the corporate travel ecosystem, including TMCs, online booking tools, GDS and supplier data, travel policy, and how travel data connects to card and expense data
Strong understanding of the spend lifecycle: policy, request and approval, transaction capture, categorization, reconciliation, and reporting
Experience taking at least one travel or spend management product or major capability from concept through production launch
Familiarity with the market landscape (e.g., SAP Concur, Navan, Amex GBT, Emburse, Ramp, Brex) and the ability to articulate where products win and lose
Experience designing for multiple personas, including finance leaders, travel managers, approvers, and travelers, while balancing control with ease of use
Strong product judgment, including the ability to prioritize across competing customer needs and make build-versus-partner decisions
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across cross-functional teams

Nice to Have:

Background at a TMC, online booking tool, travel supplier, or T&E platform
Experience applying AI/ML to finance or travel workflows such as audit, anomaly detection, or classification
Experience with corporate card programs, virtual cards for travel (lodged or central travel accounts), or card-issuing platforms
Background in global or multi-entity travel programs (multi-currency, VAT/GST reclaim, regional policy, duty of care)
Experience integrating with ERP, HRIS, travel, or procurement systems (e.g., Oracle, SAP, Workday, NetSuite)
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Benefits:

Competitive salary and bonus or variable incentive pay (role-dependent)
Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
Unlimited PTO
Paid parental leave (eligible employees)
401(k) match
$250 annual learning & development reimbursement
Onsite gym access for HQ (Santa Clara) employees
Office perks: snacks, happy hours, and company events

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit and business need.

You can find our Privacy Notice linked on the bottom of our appzen.com website.

About the Company

AppZen

AI-powered SaaS for financial process automation

AppZen uses artificial intelligence to automate financial workflows for businesses through a SaaS platform. It provides three core capabilities: Accounts Payable (AP) automation that entries invoices and maps them to the correct general ledger codes and purchase orders; Travel and Expense (T&E) management that analyzes receipts to flag non-compliant or suspicious purchases and speeds up reimbursements; and card monitoring that watches card activity in real time, categorizes expenses, and detects fraudulent behavior. The product integrates with existing systems with minimal IT effort and claims to show a return on investment within days of implementation. Compared with typical finance tools, AppZen focuses on end-to-end AI-driven automation across AP, T&E, and card expenses to cut manual work and improve compliance. Its goal is to help businesses run their financial processes more efficiently, stay compliant, and reduce fraud through rapid deployment and ongoing AI-driven insights.

Company size: 201-500
Company stage: Growth Equity (Non-Venture Capital)
Total funding: $281M
Headquarters: San Jose, CA
Founded: 2012

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