Senior Manager, Real Estate & Workplace Programs

Navan is seeking a Senior Manager, Real Estate and Workplace Programs to build the operating cadence for our global real estate and workplace portfolio. This is a real estate-first role with strong program discipline, focused on creating structure around our spaces, lease obligations, key dates, occupancy and utilization, space planning options, active workstreams, stakeholder inputs, standards, and portfolio decision processes. This role owns the internal portfolio strategy, business case development, broker coordination, and decision process. 

Reporting to the Senior Director, Real Estate & Workplace, this person will own end-to-end portfolio initiatives, turning fragmented information into clear decisions, owners, timelines, risks, and executive-ready updates. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for someone with corporate real estate judgment, global portfolio discipline, and the ability to drive complex cross-functional work. Consistent with Navan’s AI-first value, this person will use modern tools and AI-enabled workflows to make the real estate and workplace operating system faster, clearer, and more scalable.

What You'll Do: 

• Build and maintain a trusted global portfolio view of our spaces, lease obligations, commercial terms, capacity, business purpose, key documents, owners, and upcoming decisions.
• Own the portfolio calendar, ensuring key lease, renewal, expansion, project, payment, and approval deadlines are visible, actionable, and translated into clear business implications.
• Manage broker relationships and transaction workstreams, ensuring market activity, proposals, deal timelines, stakeholder inputs, and decision points are coordinated and aligned to Navan’s business needs.
• Own the internal business case for real estate decisions, including options, assumptions, risks, financial impact, operational implications, stakeholder alignment, and recommended path forward.
• Partner closely with Finance to maintain visibility into occupancy costs, rent commitments, capex and opex assumptions, budget exposure, forecast changes, and scenario models.
• Coordinate occupancy, utilization, and capacity planning inputs across key locations, and use them to frame space planning options such as expansion, consolidation, sublease, exit, relocation, or seating changes.
• Partner with business stakeholders to align requirements, constraints, timing, decision makers, and open questions.
• Create visibility across real estate and workplace projects, including milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, budgets, escalations, and leadership updates.
• Build repeatable standards for space requests, project handoffs, site readiness, and portfolio reviews.
• Apply practical AI-enabled workflows and automation to improve portfolio visibility, documentation, reporting, decision preparation, and operating efficiency.

What We're Looking For:

• 6+ years of experience in corporate real estate, workplace strategy, real estate portfolio management, or real estate program management.
• Experience supporting a multi-site corporate real estate or workplace portfolio; international or global portfolio experience strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of lease events, renewals, notice dates, transaction timelines, landlord coordination, broker processes, and key commercial obligations.
• Experience managing brokers and external real estate partners while owning internal stakeholder alignment, business case development, financial assumptions, and executive decision materials.
• Ability to connect headcount, seats, utilization, cost, timing, and business needs into clear portfolio views, options, and decision support.
• Strong partnership skills with Finance, People, Legal, Procurement, IT, Security, and regional workplace teams on occupancy planning, portfolio forecasting, and real estate decision governance.
• Strong program management skills, with the ability to create clear cadences, decision tracking, escalation paths, and cross-functional accountability.
• Excellent analytical and executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize conflicting inputs into clear trackers, status updates, decision memos, risk summaries, and leadership updates.
• Strong comfort with AI-enabled tools, automation, and data-driven workflows; curious and proactive about using technology to improve how teams operate.
• Ability to travel up to 20% across domestic and international locations as portfolio initiatives require.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience in a high-growth technology company or similarly fast-moving global environment.
• Prior experience in corporate real estate, workplace strategy, portfolio strategy, either in-house or with firms such as JLL, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, or similar. 
• Hands-on experience coordinating across AMER, EMEA, and APAC time zones, vendors, lease structures, regional teams, and external project partners.
• Familiarity with workplace data sources such as badge data, seat inventories, HRIS headcount, finance forecasts, and lease administration tools.

What Success Looks Like:

• We have one trusted view of every space we occupy, what it entails, what it costs, and what decisions are coming.
• Lease obligations, notice windows, renewals, project milestones, and decision deadlines are visible before they become urgent.
• Occupancy, utilization, seat count, and headcount data are reviewed consistently and used to frame clear space planning options.
• Brokers, Finance, Legal, business stakeholders, and regional workplace teams operate from a clear decision process, with Navan-owned business cases guiding major real estate recommendations.
• Leadership has decision-ready materials for major space, cost, timing, and portfolio tradeoffs, and regional workplace teams have clearer structure around real estate-driven work.