How Zapier hires globally – without compliance guesswork, manual data entry or administrative friction.

Zapier is an AI orchestration platform that enables organisations to construct and automate workflows, deploy AI agents and link systems across 9,000+ apps. From its founding it has been a fully remote, distributed company, operating on the principle that location should not determine who can be hired. If the right engineer was based in Poland, Zapier wanted the flexibility to recruit them there or wherever they might be.

The challenge: Compliance risk across borders

Putting that principle into practice required hiring beyond the few countries where Zapier already maintained legal entities. Each market carried its own employment laws, tax obligations and compliance obligations, and getting any of those wrong could create real legal exposure. As Laura Del Gaudio, Zapier's Associate General Counsel for Global Employment, puts it, "It's really hard to understand compliance globally across hundreds of countries." Zapier chose an Employer of Record model specifically to close that gap and to reduce the risk of misclassification when hiring outside its own entities.

The payroll function faced a similar dilemma. As Zapier entered new jurisdictions, entities sometimes went live faster than the lean payroll team could develop local expertise, leaving the team uncertain about unfamiliar local rules and regulations.

The solution: One partner for EOR, payroll and HR data

Zapier did not want another supplier to manage; it needed a partner ready to work alongside its team as the company scaled, and found that partner in Remote, which now underpins three connected elements of Zapier's employment stack: Employer of Record, Global Payroll, and a native integration with BambooHR.

"What we were looking for was a true partner, not just a vendor-customer relationship."

Laura Del Gaudio, Associate General Counsel, Global Employment

Remote Employer of Record

Remote's EOR enables Zapier to hire compliantly in markets where it lacks a legal entity, with Remote assuming the contractual responsibilities of the employer relationship. That assurance gives Zapier greater confidence as it hires into more countries.

Remote Global Payroll

In countries such as India and Spain, where Zapier had no prior payroll experience, Remote's in-country teams support Zapier's payroll operations directly, guiding them through unfamiliar rules and regulations. An integrated upload feature also manages Zapier's variable payments each month, replacing what had been manual entry.

BambooHR integration

Zapier uses BambooHR as its system of record for HR data, so a native integration with Remote was essential from the start. With it in place, updates now flow automatically between the two systems, with new hires, terminations, address updates and salary changes all syncing without anyone touching a spreadsheet.

The impact: Faster hiring, leaner payroll, deeper automation

With Remote implemented across EOR, payroll and HR systems, the outcomes are visible in different ways throughout the business.

Global hiring: from research to reassurance

Where compliance queries once required hours of independent research, Zapier's legal team can now obtain a clear answer quickly from Remote’s responsive specialists. "Normally, I would have to spend several hours researching; working with Remote, it was less than a half an hour of my time, and I was confident in the information I was getting," Laura says. That certainty comes from more than speed: because Remote is contractually the employer of record, the accountability for getting it right also sits with Remote.

"As an attorney, I like to see that stuff in writing. They took that on. That is their role. That's why you use a provider like Remote."

Laura Del Gaudio, Associate General Counsel, Global Employment

The result: in the last six months alone, Zapier has hired into eight new countries through Remote's EOR, with further entities, including Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, now moving onto the platform.

Payroll: manual entry replaced, local expertise trusted

On the payroll side, the upload feature that removed manual data entry has produced a measurable time saving: Zapier's team estimates up to ~80% of the time previously spent on variable payments each month. "We don't have to do anything manually anymore, which is great," the team says.

That efficiency is matched by a growing reliance on Remote's local payroll experts, especially in markets Zapier was entering for the first time.

"I speak to Remote’s local teams on a regular basis and get so much help and support from them that I would be truly lost without them."

Fiona Wilson, Senior Global Payroll Specialist

Automation combined with local expertise has removed payroll as a barrier to where Zapier can expand next.

Integrations: Remote is designed to be built on

The BambooHR integration automatically synchronises core HR data, but Zapier didn’t stop there. Its People Ops team took it further by building a series of Zaps, leveraging Remote’s open API, to automate their entire expense workflow in days. From review to approval to posting expenses in Remote, the end-to-end process now runs automatically without manual intervention.

"Our people ops team have built a number of Zaps and agents, which allow us to review expenses with a one-click approval. And once they're approved, they automatically sync to Remote with the API. And that means they're automatically in payroll without having to review them."

Fiona Wilson, Senior Global Payroll Specialist

"It's honestly been a true pleasure to work with the Remote team. Just being able to have that confidence is great for our team’s day to day. That's why we wanted Remote, and they've come through for us on that."

Laura Del Gaudio, Associate General Counsel, Global Employment

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