Mid-level / Senior Platform Engineer (Porting / Co-dev)

Blackbird Interactive

$126K — $160K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Strong proficiency in modern C++ and systems-level debugging skills.
  • Solid understanding of CPU architecture, memory hierarchy, cache behavior, and I/O characteristics on consoles.
  • Experience with multithreading and performance profiling.
  • Ability to deliver maintainable solutions and uphold team standards.
  • Experience with platform SDKs and performance-related responsibility on shipped titles.

Responsibilities

  • Own and evolve platform systems in proprietary engines for PC and consoles.
  • Implement and optimize memory systems to enhance performance.
  • Build and tune async file I/O and asset streaming foundations.
  • Improve CPU performance and scalability through advanced techniques.
  • Integrate and maintain SDK-facing code with clean boundaries between systems.
  • Profile and optimize code using various tools to identify performance issues.
  • Collaborate with multiple teams to ensure builds are performant and stable.

Benefits

  • Remote-friendly work arrangement available for Canadian residents.
  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge technologies in game development.
  • Promotion of an inclusive environment that values diverse perspectives.
Full Job Description
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.


$126,000 - $160,000 a year

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