After the end of legacy G Suite was announced, I tried using iCloud+ to forward my personal domain to Gmail. However, because iCloud does not seem to support ARC for forwarding, Gmail was sending too much to Spam.
I tried many other mainstream forwarding options and settled on Pobox as the best overall option, and moved my personal domain over. It's working pretty well, flowing to my regular Gmail account and having aliases set up in Gmail.
If you really want to host your own server for incoming mail, SES would probably be fine for SMTP and very cheap. With things set up correctly (SPF, DKIM), my personal experience with deliverability has been problem-free. However, I've seen others say they've still had issues because of the SES IPs. For double-checking the quality of your setup, mail-tester.com is handy.
If you want to migrate to a free consumer service (like a personal Gmail account and using aliases), a forwarding service that also provides SMTP is an option. I've been testing Pobox.com and it looks great ($20/yr for up to 20 addresses). I first tried using my registrar's forwarding service, and sending from aliased addresses via the Gmail SMTP Server, and had lots of trouble with deliverability, so I wouldn't recommend that.
I've never used one, but I have heard of some "Employer of Record" companies that have a physical presence in the country you're looking into hiring in. They'll effectively hire the employee on your behalf, and then you just pay their sister entity (in the same country as you) a consulting fee equal to the employee's salary plus whatever fees are applicable. Could be an option for companies looking to start doing this.
I tried many other mainstream forwarding options and settled on Pobox as the best overall option, and moved my personal domain over. It's working pretty well, flowing to my regular Gmail account and having aliases set up in Gmail.