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The Role
Develop and optimize UI systems for Minecraft Bedrock across multiple platforms, ensuring performance and accessibility. Collaborate with design, UX, and gameplay teams while mentoring junior developers.
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.
In 2022, we announced that our studio is implementing a four-day work week as well as supporting in-studio, remote within Canada, and hybrid work arrangements as permanent options to our employees.
We’re looking for a Senior UI Software Engineer to help build, evolve, and optimize player-facing UI systems and in-game menus for Minecraft (Bedrock Engine) across console, PC, and mobile. You’ll partner closely with design, UX, art, and gameplay to deliver accessible, performant, and beautiful interfaces at massive scale—supporting everything from onboarding flows to live service menus, store/marketplace surfaces, and cross-platform multiplayer experiences.
This role is remote-friendly in Canada (Pacific-time overlap required).
What You’ll Tackle
- UI Systems & Features – Design, implement, and maintain UI features in C++ as well as React and Typescript on the Bedrock Engine, leveraging its data-driven UI frameworks (layouts, widgets, animation, navigation, input, and state management).
- Performance on All Devices – Profile and optimize CPU/GPU usage, memory, draw calls, and asset footprints for mobile-class hardware and console targets; ensure UIs remain snappy at 60fps+ where applicable.
- Rendering & Tech Integration – Work within the engine’s rendering pipeline to ensure robust UI rendering, text shaping, localization, and theming; collaborate on batching, atlasing, and shader considerations for UI elements.
- Input & Accessibility – Build responsive input handling across gamepad, mouse/keyboard, and touch; champion accessibility (scaling, color/contrast, screen reader readiness, localization/RTL, IME).
- Live Service & Commerce Surfaces – Partner with service and content teams to implement data-driven menus, event surfacing, marketplace/storefront UI, and news/seasonal content hooks.
- Multi-Platform Compliance – Integrate UI that respects platform guidelines (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Windows, iOS, Android); support certification-related UI behaviors and platform entitlement/UX flows.
- Pipelines & Authoring – Improve UI authoring workflows (schemas, prefabs/templates, style tokens), content validation, and CI checks to keep iteration fast and safe for a global content team.
- Mentorship & Collaboration – Act as a technical point-of-contact for UI; review code, unblock cross-discipline partners, and set high quality bars for stability and player experience.
You’ll Thrive Here If You
- Have 5+ years of professional experience in React, Typescript and C++ game/UI engineering, including at least one shipped multi-platform title (console + either PC or mobile).
- Have hands-on experience with engine-level UI systems (retained-mode or immediate-mode), including layout, animation, navigation/state, input, and data binding.
- Are comfortable profiling and optimizing UI performance (renderdoc or similar GPU tools, platform profilers, frame analyzers), and diagnosing platform-specific issues.
- Understand text and localization pipelines (font atlases, fallback fonts, shaping, bidi/RTL, plural rules) and can build resilient systems for global audiences.
- Communicate clearly across disciplines and take end-to-end ownership—from technical design through implementation, testing, and polish.
- Are comfortable with Git, and build systems/CI such as Jenkins, TeamCity, or ADO.
Nice-to-Have (Bonus XP)
- Experience developing UI within Minecraft Bedrock or another large data-driven UI framework
- Familiarity with console platform SDKs (Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo) and certification requirements as they relate to UI/UX.
- Knowledge of layout engines (e.g., flexbox-style systems), text shaping (e.g., HarfBuzz concepts), or accessibility standards (WCAG-inspired game UI practices).
- Prior work on live service games (feature flags, A/B tests, remote config) and store/commerce surfaces (catalog, entitlements, receipts).
- Passion for tooling and CI/CD, including automated UI validation (linting, schema checks, screenshot diffs) and shaving minutes off iteration time.
How You’ll Work
- Collaborate with design, UX, and art to translate wireframes into robust, reusable UI components.
- Write technical designs, break down delivery plans, and uphold quality gates (unit/integration tests where appropriate, perf budgets, accessibility checks).
- Partner with gameplay and online/service teams to surface dynamic data safely and efficiently.
- Support stable cross-platform builds; participate in code reviews, risk management, and feature hardening.
Top Skills
Ado
C++
Git
Jenkins
React
Teamcity
Typescript
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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.
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