Runa Rebuilds LatAm Payroll Platform and Expands Across South America

Runa operates a cloud-based payroll and human resources software platform built specifically for businesses in Latin America. Headquartered in Mexico City, the Series A company allows organizations to manage payroll calculations, time tracking, employee performance, and HR reporting within a single environment. Millions of small and medium-sized businesses across Latin America still rely on spreadsheets or decades-old software to calculate wages and local tax withholdings. Runa automates these operations down to four clicks, helping companies process payroll quickly without specialized background knowledge.

Founder Background and Initial Growth

Runa was founded in 2018 by Chief Executive Officer Courtney McColgan. Prior to establishing Runa, McColgan served as Chief Marketing Officer at Cabify, expanding the business across 12 countries and 130 cities. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Stanford Graduate School of Business, with earlier career experience at venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Morgenthaler Ventures.

Speaking on La Frontera, McColgan explained that managing Cabify's regional business operations revealed how poorly existing HR and payroll software served companies in Latin America. Employers often faced a choice between expensive foreign enterprise applications or obsolete local software tools. Runa joined Y Combinator's Winter 2018 batch and secured funding from investors including Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Gaingels, MVP Ventures, Scribble, and VU Venture Partners.

Earlier product updates reported by Contxto highlighted Runa's regional growth across Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, introducing integrations with Mexico's healthcare system alongside performance tracking modules.

Core Architecture Rebuild and LatAm Expansion

In an interview with Alto, McColgan shared that Runa undertook a complete rebuild of its underlying software system. Rather than attempting incremental fixes on early code, the team re-architected the product to handle complex multi-country compliance rules and larger workforce scales.

Along with this architectural update, Runa is expanding its coverage beyond Mexico into Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, and Brazil. The company offers both paid software suites and a free tier designed for businesses with fewer than 25 employees.

To support this platform rebuild and cross-border expansion, Runa is recruiting an Engineering Manager in Mexico City or remote to lead engineering squads and oversee software rollouts. The team is also hiring a DevOps Engineer to manage cloud infrastructure, automate deployment lifecycles, and maintain application performance.

Product Development and Hiring

Runa's technical roadmap emphasizes scalable API platforms, customized web dashboards, and modular enterprise software features. The organization is expanding its engineering and product design teams across several remote roles in Mexico and the US.

Runa is hiring a Sr. Software Engineer (FE) to lead frontend developers constructing web applications using React.js and JavaScript. To strengthen backend architecture, the company is seeking a Sr. Full Stack Engineer to build platform services, developer tooling, client libraries, and APIs.

On the user experience team, Runa is adding a Sr UX/UI Designer to conceptualize features across payroll and HR platforms, maintain the corporate design system, and collaborate with frontend developers on user interfaces.

Open Roles at Runa

See all open roles at Runa