Creative Director - External Development

Blackbird Interactive Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 130,000 - 151,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Job summary

Blackbird Interactive is seeking a Creative Director - External Development to lead a portfolio spanning ports, remasters, live service support, and co-development. You will partner with Executive Producer and Technical Director to set creative direction, quality standards, and strategic roadmaps.

The role requires blending creative judgment, product thinking, and project leadership to translate opportunities into actionable plans while aligning teams, partners, and stakeholders for high-impact

Qualifications

• Proven leadership of design, art, engineering, and production teams.
• Shipped titles with external development or co-development experience.
• Strong product judgment balancing player value and business goals.
• Ability to drive roadmaps and partner with external publishers.

Responsibilities

• Lead and oversee a portfolio of External Development projects (ports, remasters, live service, co-development).
• Define creative intentions, quality bars, and roadmaps across projects.
• Evaluate opportunities, perform due diligence, and inform staffing and planning decisions.
• Collaborate with Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production to align quality and delivery.

Skills

Leadership

Product judgment

Stakeholder management

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Mentorship

Communication

Job description

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.

PLEASE NOTE: 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

• Partner with the Executive Producer and Technical Director to provide leadership and oversight across a portfolio of projects within the External Development business unit.
• Help establish, communicate, and maintain creative intentions and appropriate quality bars across ports, remasters, live service initiatives, and co-development projects.
• 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.
• Evaluate project roadmaps, feature plans, and major initiatives to ensure teams are pursuing the highest-value opportunities within schedule and budget constraints.
• Work with project leadership teams to identify risks, uncover gaps in planning, and support mitigation strategies.
• Help teams decompose complex creative, gameplay, UX, technical, and production challenges into clear initiatives, ownership structures, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
• Collaborate with Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production, and Technical Art teams to align quality expectations and delivery strategies.
• Support teams in evaluating trade-offs between quality, scope, schedule, cost, and player value.
• Facilitate alignment between clients, project leadership, and development teams regarding priorities, scope, quality expectations, and execution plans.
• Participate in project reviews, milestone planning, roadmap discussions, and quality assessments across the business unit.
• Help establish scalable frameworks, planning methodologies, and best practices that improve consistency across projects.
• Support project leaders and multidisciplinary teams by providing guidance on prioritization, initiative structuring, quality evaluation, and solution development.
• Communicate recommendations, risks, dependencies, and strategic considerations clearly to internal and external stakeholders.
• Contribute to the long-term growth and maturity of the business unit through leadership, mentorship, and continuous improvement initiatives.

You’ll Thrive Here If You Have

• Significant experience leading product, creative, design, or development teams within commercial game development, with a track record of influencing project direction and delivery.
• Shipped multiple titles and understand the realities of balancing player experience, quality, scope, schedule, and budget.
• Experience working with external publishing partners or within co-development and partner-led production environments.
• Strong product judgement, with the ability to evaluate competing creative and development priorities and make pragmatic recommendations that maximise player and business value.
• Experience working effectively across Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production, and QA, building alignment between disciplines with differing priorities.
• The ability to analyse complex project challenges, identify underlying causes, and help teams develop clear, actionable solutions.
• Experience reviewing roadmaps, production plans, and feature proposals, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and improve project direction.
• Experience presenting recommendations and influencing decision-making with project leadership, studio leadership, and partners.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills, with a collaborative leadership style that enables teams to succeed rather than directing through authority.
• A passion for mentoring project leaders, improving development practices, and raising the overall quality and maturity of multidisciplinary teams.
• The ability to operate comfortably at both strategic and project leadership levels, contributing to business unit planning while supporting projects through day-to-day decision-making.

Bonus XP

• Experience leading or contributing to ports, remasters, remakes, franchise modernization, or live service projects.
• Experience working within external development or co-development production environments.
• Experience as an Art Director, Creative Director, Game Director, Design Director, Development Director, or Product Lead on shipped titles.
• Experience supporting business development activities, including opportunity assessment, project pitches, or RFP responses.
• Experience evaluating legacy titles and identifying opportunities to modernize gameplay, visuals, user experience, accessibility, or technical features while preserving the identity of the original game.
• Experience developing studio-wide frameworks, review processes, planning methodologies, or quality standards that improve consistency across multiple projects.
• Experience across multiple genres, platforms, engines, or business models, including AAA, AA, mobile, PC, console, or live operations.
• An active interest in industry trends, player expectations, and evolving best practices in game design, accessibility, user experience, and franchise development.

$185,000 - $215,000 a year