HRTech Startups Building the Infrastructure for Remote-First Companies

For years, international companies looking to hire world-class talent in the Middle East and North Africa faced a massive operational wall. Fragmented labour laws, compliance mandates (like Saudi Arabia’s Saudization or the UAE's Emiratisation) and complex regional payment rails meant that hiring a remote engineer in Cairo or a product designer in Riyadh traditionally required setting up an expensive local corporate entity.

But the landscape has fundamentally shifted. Driven by a wave of massive regional funding rounds and a transition toward borderless operations, a sophisticated network of homegrown HR-tech innovators has emerged. These aren’t just basic job boards; they are the core compliance, cross-border payroll, and AI-driven vetting infrastructure making remote-first setups in MENA seamless for global conglomerates and local startups alike.

RemotePass

Founders: Kamal Reggad (CEO), Karim Nadi (CSO)

Last funding round: $17.4 million Series B funding round in May 2026. Since its founding in 2021 in the UAE, RemotePass has grown into a global employment platform that helps companies onboard, pay and manage remote teams and contractors in over 120 countries. For remote workers across the MENA region, RemotePass also helps guarantee access to on-time, multi-currency payments, benefits like health insurance, and even physical perks such as laptop provisioning or co-working space passes—all of which is managed entirely by the employer through a single dashboard.

Their latest funding round, which saw them raised $17.4 million Series B funding led by EBRD Venture Capital, aims to help the company accelerate their expansion after having reached profitability in 2025.

AstroLabs

Founders: Muhammad Mekki, Louis Lebbos

Founded in 2013 in Dubai, AstroLabs is one of the oldest startups on this list, and can now rightfully be called a market leader. Supporting over 1,800 companies from more than 50 countries to operate in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, AstroLabs is focused less on hiring, and more so on streamlining company formation, HR & payroll services, office solutions, and compliance support with governmental agencies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This all contributes to helping remote-first companies operate in the region.

For example, if a global remote-first company wants to hire high-level talent legally in KSA or the UAE without setting up a massive local corporate entity, AstroLabs acts as the operational interface that smoothens that process, navigating local government portals, managing compliance, and handling quota tracking natively.

Bayzat

Founders: Talal Bayaa (CEO), Brian Habibi (CMO), Tarek Bayaa (CCO)

Last funding round: $25 million Series C funding round in December 2022.

As one of the most established HR-tech companies in the region, UAE-based Bayzat provides automated HR administration, localized payroll processing, and digital health insurance with a remote-first edge. Through their AI-powered platform, remote companies without a robust HR team can carry out AI-powered job posting, application tracking, video interview screening, and even employee onboarding. Once onboarded, Bayzat’s services then cover other parts of the employee lifecycle, from talent development, compensation and benefits, to employee departure and offboarding.

Elevatus

Founders: Yara Burgan (CEO), Yacoub Zureikat (COO), Yanal Kashou

Last funding round: $10.5 million Series A funding round in September 2022.

Founded in 2019, this Saudi-based recruitment platform builds enterprise-grade, AI-powered recruiting and video assessment software that centralizes the entire remote hiring pipeline. In just three years, Elevatus helped companies worldwide conduct over 3 million video assessments and recruit thousands of candidates, before raising $10.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Global Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures in 2022. Since then, the HR tech provider has accelerated its business expansion and streamlined their platform, which is able to run end-to-end recruitment with full compliance, zero code, and deployment in under one week.

Squadio

Founder: Khaled Shenawy (CEO)

Last funding round: $3 million pre-Series A round in October 2025.

Founded in 2019 by Khaled Shenawy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Squadio is a specialized remote-hiring infrastructure platform that bridges businesses with vetted engineers, designers, and product specialists. Operating globally but with a talent pool drawn primarily from the MENA region, Squadio’s platform enables companies to assemble and scale fully remote product teams in a fraction of the time it would traditionally take. To that end, their platform now features over 55,000 tech professionals who have worked with 450+ companies globally, from MENA’s own tech hubs all the way to Silicon Valley in the United States.

Cercli

Founders: Akeed Azmi (CEO), David Reche

Last funding round: $12 million Series A funding round in October 2025.

Cercli was founded in 2023 with the mission of unifying hiring, payroll, and compliance solutions for businesses across the MENA region. Instead of patching together various localized software platforms, what Cercli offers remote-first companies is a single platform where they can handle all their HR needs. Since its founding in Dubai, Cercli has processed more than $100 million in salaries across 50 countries, and recently securing a $12 million Series A funding round to expand its AI-native workforce platform.