Creative Director – External Development

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Blackbird Interactive

WebsiteLinkedInAll Job Openings

201 - 500 employees

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.

📋 Description

• 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

• 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

• Flexible work arrangements