How to Apply to Navan

Key Takeaways

Before applying, explore Navan's product by watching demo videos or reading customer case studies on navan.com — referencing specific product features in your application immediately differentiates you from candidates who treat this as just another job posting
Tailor your resume for each specific Navan role using exact keywords from the job description, since Greenhouse enables recruiters to search and filter candidates by keyword relevance
If you know anyone at Navan, request an internal referral through Greenhouse's referral system before submitting your application — referred candidates are typically flagged and reviewed faster
Prepare for a fast-moving interview process (often 2-3 weeks) by blocking calendar availability in advance and having your professional references ready to go after the panel stage
Practice articulating a specific example of end-to-end ownership — a project you drove from zero to completion — as this is the cultural attribute most consistently evaluated across Navan's interview panels
For GTM roles, research Navan's competitive landscape (SAP Concur, Egencia, TravelPerk) and be ready to articulate Navan's differentiation in your own words during the hiring manager interview
Submit complete applications with all optional fields answered — Greenhouse flags incomplete submissions, and thoroughness signals the same attention to detail Navan expects on the job

About Navan

Navan (formerly TripActions) has redefined corporate travel and expense management by building an all-in-one platform that combines booking, payments, and expense tracking into a seamless experience. The company's AI-powered super app serves businesses ranging from mid-market firms to global enterprises, helping them control spend while giving employees a consumer-grade travel experience. Founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, Navan has grown rapidly to become one of the most highly valued private companies in the travel-tech space, backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Greenoaks Capital. Navan's culture blends startup urgency with enterprise ambition. Employees frequently cite the pace of innovation as both exhilarating and demanding — this is a company that ships fast, iterates constantly, and expects ownership at every level. Cross-functional collaboration is deeply embedded in daily work; engineers sit alongside product managers and customer success teams to solve real traveler pain points. The company operates with a global footprint, with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, London, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and across Latin America. People want to work at Navan because the product solves a problem nearly everyone understands — the frustration of corporate travel. That tangible mission, combined with the opportunity to build within a category-defining company still in its growth phase, draws top talent from both enterprise SaaS and consumer tech. With approximately 92 active roles spanning engineering, go-to-market, strategy, recruiting, and customer success, Navan is actively scaling teams that will shape the next chapter of business travel.

Application Process

Identify Your Target Role on Navan's Careers Page
Visit navan.com/careers and browse the 92+ open positions, filtering by department (Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, G&A, Strategy) and location. Navan's job listings are detailed — read the full posting carefully, as many roles specify whether they're tied to a specific product vertical (Travel, Expense, Payments) or a regional market like LATAM. Understanding the product area helps you tailor your application from the outset.
Submit Your Application Through Greenhouse
Navan uses Greenhouse as its applicant tracking system, so all applications route through structured submission forms. You'll typically upload your resume, provide contact information, and answer role-specific screening questions. Some positions — particularly in strategy, analytics, or recruiting — may include short-answer prompts designed to assess your thinking before a recruiter ever reviews your profile.
Recruiter Screen (Phone or Video)
If your application clears initial screening, expect a 30-minute call with a recruiter, often a dedicated specialist for your function (Navan hires Senior Recruiters specifically for GTM, G&A, and Technical pipelines). This conversation typically covers your background, motivation for joining Navan, compensation expectations, and logistical details like location flexibility and start date. Demonstrating that you understand Navan's product and competitive positioning makes a strong first impression.
Hiring Manager Interview
The next stage commonly involves a 45-60 minute conversation with the hiring manager. For go-to-market roles like Mid-Market Account Executive, expect scenario-based questions about your sales methodology and how you'd position Navan against legacy travel management companies. For engineering roles, this may include a technical discussion about system design relevant to Navan's high-throughput booking or payments infrastructure.
Skills Assessment or Case Study
Many Navan roles incorporate a practical assessment. Strategy Analyst candidates may receive a take-home case study involving travel spend data or market analysis. Engineering candidates typically complete a coding challenge or system design exercise. Customer Success and Account Management roles often involve a mock client scenario where you demonstrate how you'd handle an escalation or quarterly business review for a Navan customer.
Panel or Cross-Functional Interviews
Navan's later-stage interviews commonly include meeting multiple stakeholders in a panel or series of back-to-back sessions. Given the company's emphasis on cross-functional collaboration, you may interview with people outside your direct team — an engineer might meet a product manager, or a sales candidate might meet someone from partnerships or customer success. This stage assesses both depth of expertise and cultural alignment with Navan's fast-paced, ownership-driven environment.
Offer and Negotiation
Successful candidates receive offers that typically include base salary, equity in the form of stock options (Navan remains a private company, making equity a significant component of total compensation), and benefits. The recruiting team usually moves quickly at this stage — Navan's startup DNA means they try to close strong candidates before they're lost to competing offers. Be prepared to discuss your timeline and any competing processes transparently.

Resume Tips for Navan

Critical Lead with Travel-Tech, Fintech, or SaaS Impact Metrics

Navan operates at the intersection of travel technology, payments, and enterprise SaaS. If you have experience in any of these verticals, make it the centerpiece of your resume summary and top bullet points. Quantify your impact — for example, 'Reduced corporate travel spend by 18% through policy optimization' or 'Scaled SaaS platform onboarding from 50 to 300 enterprise accounts.' Navan's hiring managers are pattern-matching for people who've operated in fast-growth, product-led environments.

Critical Mirror Navan's Product Language in Your Resume

Study Navan's website and job descriptions for recurring terminology: 'expense management,' 'corporate travel,' 'spend visibility,' 'AI-powered,' 'T&E,' 'duty of care,' 'travel policy compliance,' and 'real-time reconciliation.' Greenhouse's parsing engine and recruiter keyword searches will flag resumes that align with these terms. Don't force-fit jargon, but if your experience legitimately involves these concepts, use Navan's specific phrasing rather than generic alternatives.

Critical Showcase Velocity and Ownership, Not Just Tenure

Navan's culture rewards people who move fast and take end-to-end ownership. Structure your bullet points to emphasize speed and scope: 'Built and launched fraud detection model in 8 weeks, reducing chargeback rate by 35%' is far stronger than 'Worked on fraud detection initiatives.' For each role, highlight a moment where you drove something forward without waiting for permission — this signals alignment with Navan's startup operating model.

Highlight Global or Multi-Market Experience

With roles spanning LATAM, EMEA, and APAC, Navan values candidates who've operated across borders. If you've worked with international teams, launched products in new geographies, or managed customer relationships across time zones, feature this prominently. For the Partners Customer Success Manager, LATAM role specifically, bilingual abilities and experience with Latin American business practices would be strong differentiators worth placing near the top of your resume.

Use Clean Formatting That Greenhouse Parses Reliably

Greenhouse handles standard resume formats well but can stumble on multi-column layouts, text boxes, headers/footers containing critical information, and heavily designed templates. Stick to a single-column layout with clear section headings (Experience, Education, Skills). Use a .pdf or .docx file — both parse well in Greenhouse, but avoid .pages or image-based files. Ensure your name, email, and phone number appear in the body text, not just in a header that the parser might skip.

Tailor Your Skills Section to the Specific Role's Tech Stack

For engineering roles at Navan, mention relevant technologies explicitly. Navan's platform involves large-scale distributed systems, and roles commonly reference Java, Kotlin, Python, React, AWS, and microservices architectures. For strategy and analytics roles, highlight SQL, Python, Tableau, or Looker. For GTM roles, mention Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, or similar tools. A tailored skills section helps both Greenhouse's keyword matching and the human reviewers who scan resumes in under 30 seconds.

Include a Concise Professional Summary That Signals Fit

Open your resume with a 2-3 sentence summary that directly connects your background to Navan's mission. Something like: 'Growth-stage SaaS sales leader with 7 years closing mid-market and enterprise deals in travel-tech and fintech. Built and managed a $12M book of business with 115% net revenue retention.' This gives recruiters an instant reason to keep reading and gives Greenhouse's parsing a rich block of relevant keywords to index.

ATS System: Greenhouse

Greenhouse is a structured hiring platform used by high-growth technology companies like Navan. It scores and organizes candidates based on parsed resume data, screening question responses, and recruiter evaluations at each stage. Greenhouse emphasizes structured scorecards, meaning every interviewer at Navan likely rates candidates against predefined attributes — making consistency and clarity in your application critical.

Submit one application per role — Greenhouse tracks multiple submissions and excessive applications to unrelated positions can signal lack of focus to recruiters
Use standard section headings like 'Experience,' 'Education,' and 'Skills' so Greenhouse's parser correctly categorizes your information
Incorporate exact keywords from the job description naturally throughout your resume, as Greenhouse allows recruiters to search and filter by keyword matches
Answer all optional screening questions — Greenhouse flags incomplete applications, and thoughtful responses to optional fields demonstrate genuine interest
Avoid tables, columns, graphics, or icons in your resume, as these elements can cause Greenhouse's parser to misread or skip content entirely
If you're referred by a Navan employee, ensure they submit the referral through Greenhouse's internal referral system before or simultaneously with your application, as referrals are tagged and typically fast-tracked
Keep your resume to 1-2 pages maximum — Greenhouse displays parsed content in a compact view, and lengthy resumes lose impact when truncated in the recruiter's dashboard

Complete Greenhouse Resume Guide

Interview Culture

Navan's interview process reflects its identity as a high-velocity, product-obsessed company. Expect a process that moves quickly — many candidates report completing the full cycle in two to three weeks — but is rigorous in evaluating both technical depth and cultural alignment. For technical and engineering roles (like Senior Director, Travel Engineering), interviews typically include a system design round focused on building scalable, real-time systems — think booking engines processing thousands of concurrent requests or payment reconciliation pipelines handling global transactions. You'll likely face a coding assessment and an architecture discussion where interviewers probe your ability to make pragmatic tradeoffs under constraints, mirroring the real decisions Navan's engineering teams make daily. Go-to-market roles (Mid-Market Account Executive, Partners Customer Success Manager) lean heavily on role-play and scenario-based evaluation. Expect to walk through a mock discovery call or present a territory plan. Interviewers assess not just your sales acumen but your understanding of the corporate travel buyer's pain points — procurement leaders, CFOs, office managers, and travel coordinators all represent different personas in Navan's sales cycle. For strategy and analytics roles (Strategy Analyst, Sr. Analyst in Fraud/Risk), the case study component is substantive. You may be asked to analyze a dataset, identify patterns in travel spend or fraudulent transactions, and present recommendations with clear business logic. Across all functions, Navan interviewers commonly evaluate three signals: ownership mentality (do you drive outcomes or wait for direction?), intellectual curiosity (do you understand why Navan is disrupting a $1.4 trillion industry?), and velocity (can you operate at startup speed without sacrificing quality?). Coming prepared with specific examples of ambiguity you've navigated and products you genuinely admire about Navan's platform will serve you well. Interviewers appreciate candidates who've used the product or explored it via a demo — it signals authentic interest rather than a transactional job search.

What Navan Looks For

Ownership mentality — Navan expects every employee to act like a founder, driving initiatives end-to-end without waiting for explicit direction or hand-holding
Domain expertise in travel-tech, fintech, payments, or enterprise SaaS — candidates who understand corporate travel procurement cycles and T&E management have a distinct advantage
Speed with quality — the ability to ship, sell, or strategize quickly while maintaining high standards is deeply valued in Navan's fast-paced operating environment
Data-driven decision making — whether you're in engineering, sales, or strategy, Navan expects you to ground your decisions in metrics, not intuition alone
Cross-functional collaboration skills — given Navan's integrated platform (travel + expense + payments), teams are highly interdependent and interviewers look for people who thrive in collaborative settings
Customer obsession — Navan's product success depends on delighting both the corporate buyer and the individual traveler, so empathy for user experience matters across every role
Global mindset — with offices and customers worldwide, Navan values candidates who can operate across cultures, time zones, and market dynamics
Resilience in ambiguity — as a growth-stage private company, priorities shift and new challenges emerge constantly; Navan hires people who find that energizing rather than destabilizing

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the hiring process typically take at Navan?

Based on candidate reports, Navan's hiring process commonly takes two to four weeks from initial application to offer, though this varies by role seniority and department. The company operates with startup urgency, meaning recruiters and hiring managers tend to move quickly when they identify strong candidates. Engineering and senior leadership roles may take slightly longer due to additional technical assessments or executive interviews. To keep the process moving, respond promptly to scheduling requests and be upfront about any competing timelines you're managing.

Does Navan require a cover letter with applications?

Navan's Greenhouse application forms do not always include a mandatory cover letter field, but when the option is available, submitting a concise, tailored cover letter can strengthen your candidacy — particularly for non-technical roles like Strategy Analyst, Customer Success Manager, or recruiting positions. Focus your cover letter on why Navan specifically (not just any SaaS company) excites you, and connect your experience to the product's mission of transforming corporate travel and expense management. Keep it under 300 words and avoid restating your resume; instead, tell a brief story that illustrates a relevant achievement or insight.

What format should my resume be in when applying through Greenhouse?

Submit your resume as a .pdf or .docx file. Both formats parse reliably in Greenhouse, but .pdf preserves your formatting exactly as intended while .docx sometimes allows for slightly better text extraction. Avoid .pages files, image-only PDFs (scanned documents), or heavily designed resumes with infographics and multi-column layouts. Greenhouse's parser works best with clean, single-column resumes that use standard section headings. Place your contact information in the body of the document rather than in headers or footers, which some parsers skip.

Does Navan offer remote work opportunities?

Navan's approach to remote work varies by role and team. Some positions are listed with specific office locations (San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore), while others may offer hybrid or remote flexibility. Check the location field on each Greenhouse job listing carefully, as it typically indicates whether the role is office-based, hybrid, or open to remote candidates. Navan's global footprint means some teams operate across time zones by default, but the company also values in-person collaboration for roles that benefit from it. If flexibility is important to you, raise it during the recruiter screen to ensure alignment early.

What level of experience does Navan typically look for?

Navan hires across a wide experience spectrum, from individual contributor analysts to senior directors. Active listings include roles suited for early-career professionals (Strategy Analyst, Customer Success Manager) as well as senior leadership positions (Senior Director, Travel Engineering). That said, even entry-level roles at Navan tend to expect candidates who can operate independently and have a demonstrated track record of impact — whether from prior jobs, internships, or academic projects. Navan's culture rewards people who punch above their weight, so focus your application on outcomes and ownership rather than years of experience.

How should I prepare for a Navan interview if I've never worked in corporate travel?

You don't need direct travel industry experience for many Navan roles, but demonstrating curiosity about the space will set you apart. Before your interview, explore Navan's product pages to understand how their platform handles booking, expense management, and corporate card payments. Read about pain points in legacy corporate travel — manual expense reports, opaque pricing, poor traveler experiences — and consider how Navan's approach addresses them. If you've ever booked business travel or filed expense reports yourself, that personal experience is worth referencing. Navan interviewers appreciate candidates who've done their homework on the $1.4 trillion corporate travel market, even if their background is in adjacent areas like fintech, SaaS, or payments.

Should I follow up after submitting my application to Navan?

After submitting through Greenhouse, you'll typically receive an automated confirmation email. If you haven't heard back within 7-10 business days, a polite follow-up to the recruiting team or a connection at Navan via LinkedIn is reasonable and generally well-received. Keep the message brief and reiterate your specific interest in the role and the company. Avoid following up multiple times or across multiple channels simultaneously, as this can signal impatience rather than enthusiasm. The most effective follow-up strategy is to have a Navan employee refer you internally, which surfaces your application with a personal endorsement.

What makes Navan different from competitors like SAP Concur or TravelPerk?

Understanding Navan's competitive positioning is valuable interview preparation. While legacy players like SAP Concur dominate market share through enterprise contracts, they're often criticized for outdated user interfaces and fragmented workflows that require separate tools for booking, expense reporting, and policy enforcement. Navan's differentiation lies in its unified platform — a single app where employees book travel, pay with a corporate card, and have expenses automatically reconciled in real time. Navan also leverages AI to surface personalized travel recommendations and dynamic policy enforcement. Compared to newer competitors like TravelPerk, Navan's integrated expense and payments capabilities give it a broader value proposition. Articulating these distinctions in your interview signals that you understand the market Navan is disrupting.

Can I apply to multiple roles at Navan simultaneously?

Greenhouse tracks all your applications to a single company, so Navan's recruiting team will see if you've applied to multiple positions. Applying to two closely related roles (e.g., two different recruiter positions) is generally acceptable, but scattershot applications across unrelated departments — say, applying to an engineering role and a sales role simultaneously — can undermine your credibility. Choose the one or two roles that best match your experience, and invest your energy in tailoring each application specifically. If a recruiter sees a stronger fit in a different open position, they'll often proactively suggest it during the screening call.

Sample Open Positions

Sources

Navan Careers Page — Navan
Navan Company Overview and Product Information — Navan
Greenhouse ATS Candidate Help & Best Practices — Greenhouse Software
Navan (TripActions) Company Reviews and Interview Insights — Glassdoor