How EDGLRD assembles and pays global teams at speed with Deel

EDGLRD is not a conventional creative agency. Founded by film director Harmony Korine, the Miami based design studio works at the intersection of AI, gaming, and film—producing campaigns for clients including Skims, Nike, Valentino, Vans, and Marc Jacobs. The company moves at the speed of its projects: assembling global teams fast, delivering, then regrouping for the next one.

Hanna Azarenko joined EDGLRD when the company had nine employees and no dedicated HR function. As the team grew and the business became increasingly global, Azarenko found herself managing payroll, compliance, contractor onboarding, and documentation largely on her own. At the time, EDGLRD relied on Paychex for payroll and a separate tool for benefits administration. The setup was functional but limiting.

The interface felt dated, and finding information required manual searching rather than guided workflows. More critically, it offered little help on compliance—something Azarenko was navigating largely from scratch.

"Before Deel, I didn't really know what documents to request. I had to Google it and figure it out myself." — Hanna Azarenko, Head of HR, EDGLRD

As EDGLRD's contractor base spread across more countries, Azarenko needed a payroll platform that could handle international complexity without requiring her to become a global employment lawyer.

Deel Payroll changed the workflow entirely. What had previously been a multi-step, unintuitive process became a quick review-and-submit cycle. Azarenko now checks deductions and salary details in minutes before approving each payroll run—the kind of efficiency that matters when you're a one-person HR team managing a distributed workforce.

"It basically takes me a few minutes to check payroll before I submit it. I just check if every person has all the deductions and the salary is correct, and I submit it. The team processes it and we pay automatically." — Hanna Azarenko, Head of HR, EDGLRD

For contractors, Deel guided onboarding step by step—collecting the right tax documentation per country and verifying identity automatically. This was a meaningful shift for a company that regularly needs to hire dozens of contractors across multiple jurisdictions at once.

"Hiring someone in Canada or Brazil was almost the same as hiring someone in the US. Deel took care of all the compliance." — Hanna Azarenko, Head of HR, EDGLRD

Where EDGLRD needed full local employment rather than contractor relationships, Deel's EOR solution filled the gap—handling Brazilian employees with Portuguese-language documentation, statutory benefits, and health insurance, without EDGLRD needing to establish its own entity.

The value of that infrastructure became clearest during a large-scale project that ran from September 2024 through January 2025. EDGLRD needed to rapidly onboard 40 contractors from Spain, Ukraine, Canada, and several other countries—then offboard them just as quickly once the work wrapped.

Deel handled both ends of that lifecycle. Onboarding was guided and consistent regardless of jurisdiction. Offboarding triggered automatic deprovisioning through Deel's Google integration, removing contractor email accounts without manual IT intervention.

The Slack integration added another layer of operational efficiency. Team members submit time-off requests directly through Slack, and automated milestone notifications—including birthday and work anniversary alerts—have become a small but meaningful part of how EDGLRD maintains team culture across a distributed workforce.

"I like the Slack plugins. It's sometimes easier to submit time off through Slack, and I like those little birthday pop-ups and work anniversaries. It makes the team happier." — Hanna Azarenko, Head of HR, EDGLRD

A foundation ready for the next phase

As EDGLRD grows and its global footprint expands, the infrastructure is already in place to support it. The company is onboarding onto Deel's PEO solution and plans to activate Deel ATS—consolidating recruiting into the same platform that already manages payroll, HR, and contractor operations.

For Azarenko, the goal she had when she first evaluated Deel has been met: a single platform that handles everything a lean HR function needs to operate globally, without requiring a specialist in every domain.