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The Role
Develop and implement core gameplay features and systems in a proprietary engine, collaborating across teams to enhance player experience and optimize performance.
Summary Generated by Built In
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’re looking for an intermediate gameplay engineer to help craft the core player experience in a proprietary engine. This role is focused on building DLC content for an established AAA universe, with an emphasis on new content and story progression tied to sci-fi themes. You will implement quest mechanics, gameplay systems, and progression features in close collaboration with designers, artists, and animators, owning work from prototype through ship.
This role is remote-friendly in Canada, with Pacific time overlap required.
What You’ll Tackle
- Core gameplay features: Design and implement player-facing systems such as movement, combat, traversal, interactions, and progression using C++ and our in-house gameplay frameworks and tools.
- Quest and narrative gameplay: Build and maintain quest-driven systems and content flows, including state management, triggers, scripted events, encounters, and progression logic that support story delivery and player choice.
- System design and architecture: Create modular, data-driven gameplay systems that support rapid iteration, reliable save/load behavior, and scale across PC and console platforms.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration: Work closely with design, animation, and audio teams to prototype mechanics, tune feel, and refine experiences through playtesting and rapid content iteration in editor tools.
- Performance and stability: Profile and optimize gameplay systems to meet performance and memory budgets, and contribute to stability through testing, debugging, and fixing live content edge cases.
- Continuous improvement: Stay current with modern gameplay and engine patterns, propose tooling or workflow improvements, and help drive internal knowledge sharing.
You’ll Thrive Here If You
- Have 3+ years of professional experience using C++ with a strong focus on gameplay systems (experience working in a proprietary engine environment is a plus).
- Hold a BSc in Computer Science or a college diploma in software engineering, game programming, or a closely related field.
- Have shipped at least one commercial game, DLC, or major post-launch update featuring your gameplay contributions.
- Are comfortable working in content-heavy codebases, supporting designer-authored data, and troubleshooting complex quest and progression bugs.
- Are passionate about prototyping, polish, and tight player control and feedback loops.
- Communicate clearly and value cross-functional collaboration.
- Are comfortable with Perforce, Git, or similar version control systems and modern profiling and debugging tools.
Bonus Experience
- Experience building or extending gameplay frameworks (abilities, animation and gameplay integration, physics-driven interactions, data pipelines).
- Familiarity with AI systems for reactive enemy or companion behaviors (state machines, behavior trees, utility AI, navigation).
Top Skills
C++
Git
Perforce
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The Company
What We Do
Blackbird Interactive (BBI) is a creative-fueled, future-driven, independent studio - behind such games as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, and the upcoming Homeworld 3, Minecraft Legends, and Crossfire: Legion.
Founded by Rob Cunningham, Yossarian King, and Aaron Kambeitz in 2010, the award-winning Vancouver studio boast its own internal CG cinematics department, led by the founder of Pixar Canada, and has also been involved in various game-adjacent projects over the years - such as Project Eagle with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other initiatives with the eatART Foundation and Sanctuary AI.
