How ByteBridge scaled global HR across 16 countries with Deel

ByteBridge is a Silicon Valley-founded global partner for AI data center delivery and lifecycle services—a business where growth is fast, global presence is non-negotiable, and operational precision matters at every level.

When Alisha Tominaga joined as Director of Human Resources, the people function hadn't kept pace with that growth. The US ran on basic ADP payroll and nothing else—no HRIS, no performance management system, and no central record of an employee's history with the company. That last gap fell to a sprawling master spreadsheet: one row per person, tracking every promotion, pay change, title update, and contract renewal across every region. In some countries, permanent employees renew annual contracts. Every update, in every jurisdiction, was logged by hand.

"About day three after I started is when I realized it was not sustainable. We had multiple payroll vendors—each country had its own—and everything else ran on spreadsheets. Different parts of the global team had completely different experiences." — Alisha Tominaga, Director of Human Resources, ByteBridge

The first performance review cycle made the stakes concrete. Reviews were PDFs sent by email, routed back to HR, forwarded to managers, and signed off via DocuSign. Every step required chasing. Every country did it differently. Tominaga had already started her RFP process by the time that first cycle landed, and was glad she had.

Tominaga's brief was clear: find a platform that could serve every worker type, in every region, under one consistent experience. Not just a fix for the US—a foundation that could hold together a globally distributed team as ByteBridge continued to grow.

ByteBridge chose Deel and approached the migration in deliberate phases, with Tominaga running the implementation largely solo. HRIS and PEO came first, then payroll, then Engage for performance management, then the ATS as her team expanded. Each module launched to employees one at a time, keeping the learning curve manageable for everyone.

Today, ByteBridge manages 22 entities across 16 countries on Deel. The US workforce runs on Deel PEO: payroll, benefits, and HR in one place. EOR covers employees in Europe. The rest of the company, spanning Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, the Netherlands, and across Southeast Asia, is on HRIS and four entities on Deel Payroll. Timekeeping and expenses sit in Deel too.

Inside Engage, career frameworks are live for both management and individual contributor tracks, each with defined competencies. Goal cycles are running, with goals tracked across the entire company.

Review cycles run automatically, segmented by region and by role type. New joiner training is automated. A new hire survey just launched. Learning courses are also live, including an AI excellence program.

The gains Tominaga describes don't always reduce to a single metric, but they're felt across the organization.

Automations now handle the manual follow-up that once consumed hours each day: timesheet reminders, ATS stage triggers, review deadlines, goal check-ins. All built with drag-and-drop workflows, no code required.

For employees, access changed. Payslips, benefits, career paths, and goals are all findable without routing a request through HR.

Internally, the conversations across ByteBridge's global HR leadership team shifted. Less time spent aligning on disconnected processes. More time spent on the company itself—where it's going and how to build a culture that holds together across 16 countries.

"It's not always the big flashy thing. Deel just slowly changed the conversations that we have. Versus all of us pushing our carts in our own directions, everything is flowing together. That's helping us focus on building the culture we want at ByteBridge." — Alisha Tominaga, Director of Human Resources, ByteBridge

ByteBridge's consolidation onto Deel isn't finished. Several payroll providers are still mid-migration, moving over as legacy contracts wind down. Every new country the company enters goes directly onto the platform.

And when questions come up—edge cases, system errors, anything in between—Tominaga has a CSM and a payroll specialist reachable by email or Slack. The response is direct and personal.