How BambooHR transformed a waitlist of 2,000 customers into a flourishing global employment product with Remote

BambooHR is one of the most trusted HR platforms for small and mid-size businesses. Built to help companies manage their people, BambooHR has long excelled at supporting local teams. As more customers expanded into multinational organisations, a gap appeared: the platform that covered everything domestically had no built-in way to help them hire, pay or manage staff across borders.

To bridge that gap, BambooHR teamed up with Remote to create a fully embedded Employer of Record (EOR) and contractor management solution, integrating global employment infrastructure straight into the platform customers already rely on.

The challenge: a global workforce without a global solution

Almost a quarter of BambooHR's customers had staff in multiple countries, yet the platform had no compliant way to provide employment, payroll and benefits for international employees. Without an integrated EOR, customers were left with a short list of costly workarounds:

• Set up legal entities in each country — an expensive, time-consuming process
• Stitch together multiple EOR providers that may not integrate with BambooHR, forcing HR teams to re-enter data across systems; or
• Classify international workers as contractors and accept the risk of misclassification.

"BambooHR has thousands of customers right now that have employees all over the world. One, they're opening up entities, which is really expensive and time-consuming. Or maybe they're hiring this talent as contractors and run misclassification risk."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Building an in-house EOR would have meant full ownership on paper, but the trade-offs were steep: an estimated $100 million USD in development costs and several years before a competitive product could be delivered. BambooHR's customers needed a global employment solution immediately, not sometime in the future. Partnering allowed BambooHR to reach the market in months rather than years, without taking on the expense or the ongoing task of keeping compliance current across dozens of countries.

The solution: one platform for global hiring and HR management

After reviewing several options, BambooHR selected Remote based on three factors: shared values, a clear commitment to compliance, and strong technical capability. Remote's ownership of 100+ in-house entities worldwide — rather than relying on third-party sub-processors — was a decisive consideration.

"We wanted to make sure we were working with a partner that had similar values. Compliance was top of mind, and that was obviously non-negotiable. And then we wanted a good technical partner, someone that was robust in their global payroll platform."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

For BambooHR customers, the experience appears inside the platform they already know. Remote's EOR and contractor management features are integrated directly into BambooHR's existing interface. Remote manages the compliance and payments infrastructure behind the scenes, while BambooHR keeps ownership of the brand and the customer relationship.

Equally important: Remote does not compete with BambooHR's core HR offering. The two solutions complement each other smoothly and offer a comprehensive global employee-management experience for customers.

BambooHR EOR powered by Remote

The embedded global employment experience is woven straight into the BambooHR ATS, Onboarding, Access and Time Off modules, so expanding into any of 90 countries feels like a natural continuation of your existing workflow. Customers can complete country-specific onboarding powered by Remote’s robust compliance schemas, and hire international staff without ever leaving the BambooHR interface. Once onboarded, those global team members are managed alongside local personnel in the familiar HRIS, creating a single, consistent source of truth for the entire organisation.

The compliance infrastructure underneath is handled entirely through Remote’s API. As employment rules change in places like Germany, Norway or France, the relevant data appears automatically inside the BambooHR system. That native integration lets HR teams deliver a compliant, high-quality employee experience without having to navigate the finer points of international law themselves.

"We trust Remote's API to serve up the relevant data for hiring an employee in that given month compliantly. We actually don't need to understand all the nuances of those compliance changes. The data is just served up. It maps to BambooHR's design system, and we give that baked-in compliant experience to the customer automatically."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

BambooHR contractor management powered by Remote

Building on that unified foundation, BambooHR embedded Remote’s contractor management product to deliver a truly cohesive workforce solution. The switch between managing full-time EOR employees and global contractors is seamless, answering the need for a single platform to oversee an entire international workforce. While the products address different employment needs, the user experience remains continuous.

The impact: rapid global expansion

Market reaction was strong from the outset. Before the EOR went live, more than 2,000 BambooHR customers had already joined a waitlist. In the first year, hundreds of customers and employees onboarded through the embedded experience, and thousands of new global opportunities opened up within BambooHR's existing customer base.

BambooHR reached the market in under six months — a pace that would have been impossible with an in-house build. The rate of iteration after launch has kept pace with delivery. When customers requested, just four days after contractor management launched, the ability to import their own existing contracts into the platform, the two teams moved quickly.

"About four days after we launched, we had a bunch of feedback from our customers. Remote's API and SDK didn't support that functionality yet, but we were able to work together and ship that to customers in less than a week from launch."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Today, BambooHR customers can manage domestic employees, international staff and global contractors all in one place. Global employment specialists can use Remote's AI knowledge bot for real-time compliance answers by country, and support cases are integrated between the two companies so customers get quick responses without switching platforms.

For Brian Crofts, the clearest sign of the partnership's success is simpler than any metric.

"I will tell you, I don't know who works for BambooHR and who works for Remote. Everybody comes with the same excitement around solving big customer problems. Everybody's great to work with and everybody's just mission driven."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

Ready to extend your platform without spending years building it? [Explore Remote Embedded]