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

BambooHR is one of the most trusted HR platforms for small and mid-size businesses. Designed to help organisations manage their people, BambooHR has traditionally excelled at supporting local teams. As customers expanded into multinational organisations, a gap emerged: the platform that covered domestic needs couldn’t help them hire, pay, or manage staff across borders.

To bridge that divide, 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 their customers already rely on.

The challenge: a global workforce with no global solution

Almost a quarter of BambooHR's customers employed people in multiple countries, yet the platform couldn't compliantly provide employment, payroll and benefits for global staff. Without a native EOR, customers were left with a short list of costly workarounds:

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

"BambooHR has thousands of customers today with employees around the world. Some are opening entities, which is costly and slow. Others are hiring the talent as contractors and taking on misclassification risk."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Building an in-house EOR meant full ownership on paper, but the trade-offs were steep: an estimated $100 million in development costs and years before the product could compete. BambooHR's customers needed a global employment solution now, not eventually. Partnering meant getting to market in months rather than years, without taking on the cost or the ongoing burden of keeping compliance current across dozens of countries.

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

After reviewing several options, BambooHR chose Remote on three grounds: shared values, a firm commitment to compliance, and strong technical capability. Remote's ownership of 100+ in-house entities around the world, instead of depending on third-party sub-processors, proved decisive.

"We wanted to ensure we were working with a partner that shared our values. Compliance was non-negotiable. And we needed a robust technical partner with a strong global payroll platform."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

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

Importantly, Remote doesn't compete with BambooHR's core HR offering. The two products work together seamlessly to give customers a holistic 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, so expanding into any of 90 countries feels like a natural extension of your existing workflow. Customers can complete country-specific onboarding built on Remote’s compliance schemas and 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 organisation.

The compliance infrastructure runs entirely through Remote’s API. When employment rules change in countries like Germany, Norway or France, the relevant data surfaces automatically in BambooHR. That native integration lets HR teams deliver a compliant, high-quality employee experience without needing to master the intricacies of international law themselves.

"We rely on Remote's API to provide the right data for hiring an employee in any given month compliantly. We don't have to understand every compliance nuance — the data is delivered and maps to BambooHR's design system, so we automatically give customers a baked-in compliant experience."

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 cohesive workforce solution. Moving between full-time EOR employees and global contractors is seamless, giving customers a single platform to oversee their entire international workforce. While the products meet different employment needs, the user experience remains continuous.

The impact: rapid global scale

The market reaction was strong from the outset. Before EOR even launched, more than 2,000 BambooHR customers had joined a waitlist. In the first year, hundreds of customers and employees onboarded via the embedded experience, and thousands of new opportunities opened across BambooHR's existing customer base.

BambooHR went to market in under six months — a timeline that would have been impossible with an in-house build. The pace of iteration since launch has matched the pace of delivery. When customers asked, just four days after contractor management launched, for the ability to import existing contracts into the platform, the teams moved quickly.

"About four days after we launched, we had a lot of feedback from customers. Remote's API and SDK didn't support that feature yet, but we worked together and shipped it to customers in less than a week from launch."

Juliet Fletcher, Group Product Manager, BambooHR

Today, BambooHR customers can manage domestic employees, 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 for any country, and support cases are integrated between the two companies so customers get fast answers without switching platforms.

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

"I'll tell you, I can't tell who works for BambooHR and who works for Remote. Everyone brings the same energy to solving big customer problems. They're great to work with and all mission driven."

Brian Crofts, Chief Product Officer, BambooHR

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