Creative Director - External Development
Blackbird Interactive is a creative-fueled, future-driven, independent game studio where the best talent in the industry can find long-term careers to help grow their abilities while working on a wide range of projects, which encompass world-class IPs as well as our own creations across multiple genres.
Our studio operates as a remote-first workplace, offering flexible work arrangements.
At this time, we are only able to hire candidates who are legally eligible to work in Canada and reside within Canada.
We are looking for a Creative Director - External Development to join the leadership team of our External Development business unit, overseeing a portfolio of projects spanning ports, remasters, live service support, and co-development initiatives.
Working alongside the Executive Producer and Technical Director , the Creative Director - External Development provides creative and product leadership across the portfolio, helping shape project strategy, quality expectations, roadmap priorities, and solution development. As the creative and product counterpart within the business unit leadership team, you will help ensure projects pursue the right opportunities, achieve the appropriate quality bar, and deliver meaningful value to players, partners, and our studio.
This role combines creative judgement , product thinking , and project leadership to help teams solve complex development challenges. You have a talent for looking at a project and quickly identifying where the greatest opportunities lie. Whether that's modernizing gameplay, improving player experience, raising visual quality, simplifying production, or reducing delivery risk. Just as importantly, you can translate those insights into practical, cross-disciplinary plans that align teams around a clear path forward.
As a strategic partner to project teams, clients, and studio leadership, you will help define what success looks like, evaluate opportunities and trade-offs, establish scalable ways of working, and support teams in delivering exceptional player experiences within practical production constraints. Whether assessing a new partner opportunity, reviewing a project roadmap, or helping a team overcome a complex production challenge, you'll provide the clarity, alignment, and creative direction that enables projects to succeed.
What You'll Lead and Deliver
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Partner with the Executive Producer and Technical Director to provide leadership and oversight across a portfolio of projects within the External Development business unit.
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Help establish, communicate, and maintain creative intentions and appropriate quality bars across ports, remasters, live service initiatives, and co-development projects.
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Drive creative and product due diligence for new partner opportunities, evaluating gameplay, presentation, user experience, modernization opportunities, production complexity, and quality expectations to inform proposals, staffing strategies, and project planning.
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Evaluate project roadmaps, feature plans, and major initiatives to ensure teams are pursuing the highest-value opportunities within schedule and budget constraints.
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Work with project leadership teams to identify risks, uncover gaps in planning, and support mitigation strategies.
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Help teams decompose complex creative, gameplay, UX, technical, and production challenges into clear initiatives, ownership structures, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
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Collaborate with Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production, and Technical Art teams to align quality expectations and delivery strategies.
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Support teams in evaluating trade-offs between quality, scope, schedule, cost, and player value.
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Facilitate alignment between clients, project leadership, and development teams regarding priorities, scope, quality expectations, and execution plans.
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Participate in project reviews, milestone planning, roadmap discussions, and quality assessments across the business unit.
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