How BambooHR transformed a 2,000-customer waitlist into a successful global employment product with Remote

BambooHR is among the most trusted HR platforms for small and mid-size businesses. Designed to help organisations manage their people, BambooHR has traditionally focused on supporting local teams. As more customers expanded into multinational organisations, a clear gap appeared: the platform that managed everything domestically could not help them hire, pay, or administer employees across borders.

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

The challenge: a workforce spanning countries but no single global solution

Almost a quarter of BambooHR's customers employed people in more than one country, yet the platform could not compliantly provide employment, payroll or benefits for international staff. In the absence of an integrated EOR, customers were left with a short list of expensive workarounds:

• Establish legal entities in every country — a costly and time-consuming process
• Combine several EOR providers that might not integrate with BambooHR, forcing HR teams to re-enter data across systems; or
• Treat international workers as contractors and assume the risk of misclassification.

"BambooHR currently has thousands of customers with employees around the world. Some are opening up entities, which is expensive and slow. Others hire that talent as contractors and therefore take on the misclassification risk."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Creating an in-house EOR would have given BambooHR legal ownership, but the trade-offs were substantial: an estimated $100 Million in development spending and several years before a competitive product could be delivered. Customers needed a global employment solution immediately, not at some distant point. Partnering allowed BambooHR to reach market readiness in months rather than years, without taking on the upfront cost or the ongoing burden of maintaining compliance across dozens of countries.

The solution: one platform for global hiring and HR management

After assessing multiple options, BambooHR selected Remote for three reasons: aligned values, a strong commitment to compliance, and considerable technical capability. Remote's ownership of 100+ in-house entities worldwide, rather than relying on third-party sub-processors, was a key deciding factor.

"We needed to be sure we were working with a partner who shared our values. Compliance was paramount and non-negotiable. We also wanted a strong technical partner, someone with a robust global payroll platform."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

For BambooHR customers, the capability appears inside the platform they already use. Remote's EOR and contractor management tools are embedded directly into BambooHR's existing interface. Remote manages the compliance and payments infrastructure behind the scenes, while BambooHR retains the brand and the customer relationship.

Just as importantly, Remote does not compete with BambooHR's core HR product. The two solutions complement one another seamlessly and provide a holistic global employee management experience for customers.

BambooHR EOR powered by Remote

The embedded global employment experience is integrated directly into the BambooHR ATS, Onboarding, Access and Time Off modules, making expansion into any of 90 countries feel like a natural extension of existing workflows. Customers can complete country-specific onboarding built on Remote’s comprehensive compliance schemas and hire international employees without leaving the BambooHR interface. Once onboarded, these global team members are managed alongside local staff in the familiar HRIS, providing a single, consistent source of truth for the organisation.

All underlying compliance infrastructure is managed via Remote’s API. As employment regulations change in countries such as Germany, Norway or France, the relevant data surfaces automatically within BambooHR. This native integration enables HR teams to deliver a compliant, high-quality employee experience without needing to navigate the complexities of international law themselves.

"We rely on Remote's API to provide the relevant data for hiring an employee in a given month in a compliant way. We do not need to learn all the nuances of those compliance changes — the data is delivered to us. It maps to BambooHR's design system, and we automatically present that built-in compliant experience to the customer."

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 genuinely cohesive workforce solution. Moving between managing full-time EOR employees and global contractors is seamless, meeting the need for a single platform to oversee the entire international workforce. Although the products meet different employment requirements, the user experience remains consistently continuous.

The impact: rapid global scale

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

BambooHR went to market in under six months — a timeframe that would have been impossible with an in-house build. The pace of iteration since launch matched the speed of delivery. When customers asked, just four days after contractor management went live, for the option to bring their own existing contracts into the platform, the two teams acted rapidly.

"About four days after launch we received a lot of customer feedback. Remote's API and SDK didn't support that functionality at the time, but we worked together 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 can consult Remote's AI knowledge bot for real-time compliance answers in any country, and support cases are integrated between the two companies so customers get quick responses without being passed between platforms.

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

"To be honest, I can't tell who works for BambooHR and who works for Remote. Everyone brings the same enthusiasm for solving significant customer problems. Everyone is a pleasure to work with and everyone is driven by the same mission."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

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