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. That includes world-class IPs as well as our own creations across multiple genres.
We are seeking a passionate Platform Engineer to help across various, technically ambitious projects. You will work across platform-facing systems on modern consoles, including PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2. You will implement new features, fix bugs, profile and optimize existing code. This role is remote-friendly in Canada (Pacific-time overlap required).
What You’ll Tackle
Own and evolve platform systems in proprietary engines across PC and consoles, with an emphasis on performance and reliability.
Implement and optimize memory systems (allocators, pools, paging/streaming heaps, fragmentation mitigation, lifetime tracking, OOM safety).
Build and tune I/O and streaming foundations (async file I/O, decompression pipelines, asset streaming, prioritization, bandwidth/latency hiding, patch-friendly layouts).
Improve CPU performance and scalability (job systems, thread scheduling, contention reduction, cache/memory locality, frame-time stability, hitch reduction).
Integrate and maintain platform SDK-facing code and abstraction layers, ensuring clean boundaries between platform-specific and cross-platform systems.
Profile and optimize using platform and internal tooling (CPU sampling, memory trackers, I/O traces, performance capture tools) to identify bottlenecks and regressions.
Partner with gameplay, rendering, audio, and content teams to define budgets, best practices, and guardrails that keep builds performant and stable.
Contribute to tooling and workflows that improve developer velocity (profiling hooks, telemetry, regression tests, automated reporting, validation checks).
Communicate clearly to production and stakeholders on constraints, trade-offs, risk, and roadmap for performance and platform readiness.
You’ll Thrive Here If You
Enjoy learning about bleeding edge technologies and implementing them from scratch.
Get excited to work on things that you’ve never worked on before.
Embrace being a generalist that can jump into various areas of a game engine, like platform APIs, streaming, rendering, audio, etc.
Have strong modern C++ and systems-level debugging skills (multithreading, performance profiling, low-level investigation).
Have solid understanding of console constraints and performance fundamentals: CPU architecture, memory hierarchy, cache behavior, and storage/I/O characteristics.
Ability to take ownership, deliver maintainable solutions, and contribute constructively to team standards.
Bonus XP
Any side projects you can share.
Shipped at least one title on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and/or Nintendo hardware, especially with platform/performance responsibility.
Familiarity with platform profiling workflows (e.g., PIX and equivalent console tooling) and building internal performance diagnostics.
Experience creating performance regression detection (benchmarks, automated captures, dashboards) and production-friendly guardrails.
Experience with Unreal Engine.
Skills Required
- Strong modern C++ and systems-level debugging skills (multithreading, performance profiling, low-level investigation)
- Solid understanding of console constraints and performance fundamentals (CPU architecture, memory hierarchy, cache behavior, storage/I/O characteristics)
- Experience implementing and optimizing memory systems (allocators, pools, paging/streaming heaps, fragmentation mitigation, lifetime tracking, OOM safety)
- Experience building and tuning I/O and streaming foundations (async file I/O, decompression pipelines, asset streaming, prioritization, bandwidth/latency hiding)
- Experience improving CPU performance and scalability (job systems, thread scheduling, contention reduction, cache/memory locality, hitch reduction)
- Experience integrating and maintaining platform SDK-facing code and abstraction layers
- Proficiency profiling and optimizing using platform and internal tooling (CPU sampling, memory trackers, I/O traces, performance capture tools)
- Ability to take ownership, deliver maintainable solutions, and contribute constructively to team standards
- Remote-friendly in Canada with Pacific-time overlap required
- Shipped at least one title on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and/or Nintendo hardware (platform/performance responsibility)
- Familiarity with platform profiling workflows (e.g., PIX and equivalent console tooling) and internal performance diagnostics
- Experience creating performance regression detection (benchmarks, automated captures, dashboards) and production-friendly guardrails
- Experience with Unreal Engine
- Side projects or work samples to share
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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