No. The regulation requires employment by the qualifying entity, and a contractor billing for warranty work is not its employee. Only the period on the company's payroll counts, and it must include twelve continuous months inside the three years before filing.
Employment means employment, whatever the working relationship felt like
The L-1 rules ask whether the beneficiary has been employed abroad continuously for one year within the preceding three years by a qualifying organization. Employment is read in the ordinary sense: the company directs the work, pays wages, withholds source deductions and issues employment records. A technician who set his own hours, carried his own insurance and submitted invoices was a supplier to the dealership even if he worked there every day. His clock starts on the date the payroll record begins. If that date is less than a year before the intended petition, the honest options are to wait, to file later or to consider whether another category fits the interim. Petitions that describe the contractor years as employment are refused, and the inconsistency between the petition and the tax records is easy for an adjudicator to see. Continuity matters too: a resignation followed by rehire restarts the count, whereas approved leave generally does not.
Hypothetical example: A Canadian industrial-pump distributor wants to send its warehouse director after she completed eight months on payroll and several earlier months as an invoicing consultant. The first review produces a dated chart of payroll, tax deductions, leave and the proposed filing date. The wage records, rather than the director's importance to the company, settle the qualifying year. Filing early would fail even if the U.S. role is managerial. The company should wait until twelve continuous payroll months fall within the relevant three-year period, then separately document the qualifying relationship and the executive or managerial duties.