Creative Director – External Development

Blackbird Interactive

Creative Director overseeing external projects within the External Development unit at Blackbird Interactive. Leading strategic partnerships and quality expectations for ports and co-development initiatives.

Posted 7/9/2026full-timeRemote • 🇨🇦 CanadaLead💰 CA$185,000 - CA$215,000 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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.

Requirements

What you’ll need

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.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Flexible work arrangements

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

Project PlanningQuality AssessmentGameplay EvaluationProduction Complexity AnalysisFeature Proposal Review

Soft Skills

Excellent CommunicationCollaborative LeadershipFacilitation SkillsProblem-SolvingStrategic Thinking