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 looking for a Lead Software Engineer to help drive the technical direction and execution of a third person tactical shooter being developed in Unreal Engine 5 for PC. You will lead engineering efforts across core gameplay systems, AI, combat support systems, navigation, and performance-critical runtime features that are essential to delivering a polished, scalable, and highly responsive tactical action experience. This role is remote-friendly in Canada with Pacific-time overlap required.
### What You’ll Lead and Deliver:
Lead the technical direction and implementation of core gameplay and runtime systems for a third person tactical shooter in Unreal Engine 5.
Own the architecture and long-term health of gameplay-adjacent systems including AI support, combat frameworks, traversal, movement, navigation, encounter scripting support, and systemic runtime features.
Partner closely with design, animation, technical design, and content teams to build responsive, maintainable systems that support tactical combat, squad behaviors, player control fidelity, and encounter scalability.
Drive engineering quality across gameplay code, emphasizing performance, maintainability, extensibility, and production-readiness.
Architect and optimize systems related to AI movement, perception, decision support, tactical positioning, spatial queries, pathfinding integration, and dynamic navigation behavior.
Support large and complex gameplay spaces by improving runtime performance, memory use, system reliability, and frame-time stability across a wide range of PC hardware configurations.
Establish engineering best practices for Unreal Engine 5 development, including code review standards, debugging workflows, profiling habits, and technical planning.
Collaborate with technical leadership to break down risks, define implementation strategies, and align engineering execution with project goals and production timelines.
Mentor engineers through design reviews, hands-on problem solving, and day-to-day technical guidance. Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and raising the overall quality bar of the team.
Communicate clearly with stakeholders about technical constraints, trade-offs, dependencies, and execution plans.
### You’ll Thrive Here If You:
Have 5+ years of professional game development experience, with demonstrated technical leadership through project ownership, mentorship, and setting engineering standards.
Have strong professional experience with C++ and Unreal Engine, including gameplay architecture, runtime systems, debugging, and optimization.
Have shipped or significantly contributed to the development of complex action, shooter, AI-heavy, or systemic gameplay features in a production environment.
Have deep experience building and maintaining gameplay systems that are responsive, scalable, and designer-friendly.
Understand the technical demands of third person action or tactical shooter gameplay, including movement responsiveness, encounter complexity, AI coordination, combat readability, and runtime performance.
Are comfortable working across systems boundaries, collaborating with multiple disciplines, and balancing short-term production needs with long-term technical health.
Bring a strong ownership mindset, practical decision-making, and a focus on helping teams move effectively under production constraints.
### Bonus XP:
Experience building third person shooter, tactical combat, or AI-driven gameplay systems.
Strong understanding of navigation systems, pathfinding, spatial reasoning, and runtime query performance.
Experience integrating or working with pathfinding middleware such as Mercuna.
Familiarity with navmesh generation, dynamic navigation updates, hierarchical pathfinding, flow fields, cover queries, tactical positioning systems, or related navigation algorithms.
Experience supporting AI at scale, including movement through complex environments, multi-agent coordination, and performance optimization for simulation-heavy gameplay.
Experience with Unreal Engine 5 systems relevant to gameplay and AI, such as Behavior Trees, EQS, AI Controllers, Character Movement, Gameplay Ability System, animation integration, and network-aware gameplay architecture.
Experience profiling and optimizing CPU-heavy gameplay and AI systems on PC.
