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

BambooHR is among the most trusted HR platforms for small and mid-size businesses. Designed to help companies manage their workforce, BambooHR has long excelled at supporting local teams. However, as more customers expanded into multinational organisations, a gap became apparent: the platform that addressed domestic operations had no built-in way to help them hire, pay or manage employees across borders.

To address that shortfall, BambooHR partnered 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 use.

Challenge: lack of a global employment solution

Almost a quarter of BambooHR's customers employed people in multiple countries, yet the platform had no compliant way to offer employment, payroll or benefits to those global employees. In the absence of an integrated EOR, customers were left with a short list of costly workarounds:

• Establish legal entities in each country, a costly and time-consuming undertaking
• Combine multiple EOR providers that may not integrate with BambooHR, forcing HR teams to re-enter data across systems; or
• Classify international staff as contractors and assume the risk of misclassification.

"BambooHR currently has thousands of customers with employees across the world. Some of them are opening up entities, which is very expensive and slow. Or they may be engaging that talent as contractors and incur misclassification risk."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Building an in-house EOR would have delivered full ownership on paper, but the trade-offs were significant: an estimated $100 million in development costs and years before the product could be competitive. BambooHR's customers required a global employment solution immediately, not at some distant point. Partnering allowed BambooHR to reach the market in months rather than years, without bearing the development cost or the ongoing burden of keeping compliance current across dozens of countries.

Solution: a unified platform for global hiring and HR management

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

"We wanted to ensure we were partnering with a company that shared our values. Compliance was paramount and non-negotiable. Equally, we sought a robust technical partner with strength in global payroll."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

For BambooHR customers, the experience remains inside the platform they already know. Remote's EOR and contractor management tools are embedded directly into BambooHR's interface. Remote manages the compliance and payments infrastructure 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 one another seamlessly and provide customers with a comprehensive global employee management experience.

BambooHR EOR powered by Remote

The embedded global employment experience is integrated 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, creating a single, consistent source of truth for the entire organisation.

The underlying compliance infrastructure is managed entirely 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 having to navigate international legal nuances themselves.

"We rely on Remote's API to provide the necessary data to hire an employee compliantly in any given month. We do not need to master every nuance of those compliance updates — the data is supplied, it maps into BambooHR's design system, and we provide that built‑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 provide a genuinely cohesive workforce solution. The transition between managing full‑time EOR employees and global contractors is seamless, meeting the need for a single platform to oversee the entire international workforce. While the products meet different employment requirements, the user experience remains continuous.

Impact: rapid global scale

Market reaction was strong from day one. Before the EOR launch, over 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 reached the market in under six months — a timeline that would have been unachievable with an in‑house build. The pace of iteration since launch has matched the speed of delivery. When customers requested, just four days after contractor management launched, the ability to import their existing contracts into the platform, the two teams responded quickly.

"Around four days after launch we received a lot of feedback from customers. Remote's API and SDK did not support that functionality yet, 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 employees, international employees and global contractors 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 companies so customers receive fast responses without needing to switch platforms.

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

"Frankly, I cannot tell who works for BambooHR and who works for Remote. Everyone shares the same enthusiasm for solving major customer problems. Everyone is great to work with and all are mission driven."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

Ready to expand your platform without investing years in building it? [Explore Remote Embedded]