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

BambooHR is widely trusted by small and mid-size businesses. Designed to help companies manage their people, BambooHR historically focused on serving local teams. As more customers expanded into multinational organisations, the platform that managed domestic operations could not support hiring, payroll, or employee management across borders.

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

The challenge: managing a global workforce without a global solution

Nearly a quarter of BambooHR's customers employed people across multiple countries, yet the platform could not compliantly provide employment, payroll or benefits for global staff. With no built-in EOR, customers were left with a short list of costly workarounds:

• Establish legal entities in each country, a costly and time-consuming undertaking
• Contract 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 assume the risk of misclassification.

"BambooHR currently serves thousands of customers with employees around the world. Some open entities, which is expensive and slow. Others hire this talent as contractors and take on misclassification risk."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Building an in-house EOR would have given BambooHR paper ownership, but the trade-offs were high: an estimated $100 million in development costs and years before a competitive product could exist. BambooHR's customers needed a global employment solution immediately, not at some distant point. Partnering allowed a market launch in months rather than years, without absorbing the cost or the ongoing burden of maintaining compliance across dozens of countries.

The solution: a unified platform for global hiring and HR management

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

"We needed to ensure we partnered with an organisation that shared our values. Compliance had to be front of mind and non-negotiable. We also wanted a technically capable partner with a robust global payroll platform."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

For BambooHR customers, the experience is embedded inside the platform they already use. Remote's EOR and contractor management tools sit within BambooHR's existing interface. Remote manages compliance and payments behind the scenes while BambooHR retains the brand and the customer relationship.

Importantly, Remote does not compete with BambooHR's core HR offering. The two products complement each other smoothly and deliver a holistic global employee management experience for customers.

BambooHR EOR powered by Remote

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

Remote’s API handles the underlying compliance infrastructure. When employment regulations change in countries such as Germany, Norway or France, the relevant data appears automatically within BambooHR. This native integration lets HR teams deliver a compliant, high-quality employee experience without having to interpret the details of international law themselves.

"We rely on Remote's API to provide the relevant data required to hire an employee compliantly in a given month. We don't need to understand every nuance of those compliance changes. The data is delivered to us, maps into BambooHR's design system, and we automatically present that baked-in compliant experience to the customer."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

BambooHR contractor management powered by Remote

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

The impact: rapid global scale

Market reaction was strong from the outset. Before EOR launched, over 2,000 BambooHR customers had already joined a waitlist. Within the first year, hundreds of customers and employees had onboarded via the embedded experience, and thousands of new opportunities were created across BambooHR's existing customer base.

BambooHR reached market in under six months—a timeline that would have been infeasible with an in-house build. Iteration since launch has matched delivery speed. When customers requested, just four days after contractor management went live, the ability to import their existing contracts into the platform, the two teams responded quickly.

"Roughly four days after launch we received a lot of customer feedback. Remote's API and SDK didn't yet support that feature, but we collaborated and shipped it to customers in under a week from launch."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Today, BambooHR customers can manage domestic staff, international employees and global contractors all in one place. Global employment specialists have access to Remote's AI knowledge bot for real-time compliance answers across any country, and support cases are integrated between the two firms so customers receive fast responses without switching platforms.

For Brian Crofts, the clearest indicator of the partnership is simpler than any metric.

"Honestly, I can't tell where BambooHR ends and Remote begins. Everyone brings the same energy to solving major customer problems. Everyone is great to work with and is mission driven."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

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