QA Lead (9-month contract)
Blackbird Interactive
Full-time
Remote
Canada
QA Lead
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.
In 2022, we announced that our studio is implementing a four-day work week as well as supporting in-studio, remote within Canada, and hybrid work arrangements as permanent options to our employees.
Weβre looking for a strategic and hands-on QA Lead to embed directly within the development team. This role focuses on building quality systems, culture, and processes across the production lifecycleβnot just managing test execution.
The QA Lead will collaborate closely with all project stakeholders to define testing strategies, ensure proper coverage throughout development, and uphold quality standards.
The ideal candidate combines strong leadership and communication skills with the ability to think both strategically and tactically. Experience managing external QA teams and optimizing workflows is a plus.
What Youβll Tackle
- Build and improve processes with publisher QA.
- Build and improve processes with internal QA, lead producers and directors. As well as communicating with the internal QA team as a whole in order to share knowledge and improve the QA group across the board.Β
- Actively participate in daily hands-on testing of complex features, builds, and gameplay systems to maintain deep project knowledge and ensure test coverage aligns with real-world play scenarios.
- Champion best practices for testing, testing processes and testing tools Facilitate knowledge sharing between scrum groups.
- Assess and provide feedback on milestones and project status and direction.
- Oversee the creation, management and monitoring of tasks communicating status to the relevant stakeholders.
- Partner with the dev team to proactively define and prioritize work to support the project.
- Interface with producers, designers, artists and programmers to understand the game direction and requirements.
- Ensure consistent knowledge-sharing, learning, documentation, as well as improving tools and processes as necessary for your team to excel.
- Troubleshoot and adapt to solve problems in dynamic, high-energy situations.
- Daily leadership and development of an embedded QA team/s for end-to-end QA.
- Partner with QA and Development leadership to both drive and manage project QA needs and deliverables.
- Proactively assess and communicate the needs or progress of development partners, and how they relate to the QA team's priorities and tasks.
- Actively develop and revise QA project and test plans, tracking work, risk management, and QA strategies and processes.
- Oversee the creation and maintenance of training, testing tools, plans, and supporting documentation.
- Effectively collaborate and communicate with other QA leads, multiple interdisciplinary teams, project stakeholders and external partners.
Youβll Thrive Here If You Haveβ¦
- 2+ years experience in a QA Lead role or equivalent.
- Communicates effectively both verbally, and in written form.
- Expertise in Quality Assurance processes, and how to implement them properly.
- Experience managing external stakeholders.
- Understands the key practices of the agile development process.
- High level of expertise on the dependencies and relationships between the various components that make up a video game.
- Expertise with various types of tests, and how to run them, as well as how to organize the tests to maximize coverage while being efficient.
Bonus XP
- Experience working in a hybrid internal-external model wherein QA collaborates with multiple partners at a time.
- RTS player and/or experienced tester in related games.
- Shipped titles across multiple platforms.
- Understanding of industry standard editors such as Unreal and Unity.
- Understanding of basic scripting languages.
$65,000 - $70,000 a year
Vacation & Extras
+ 4-day, 32-hour work week for all full-time staff
+ Mentorship program
+ Skunkworks internal game jam program
+ 4 weeks paid vacation per year
+ 11 paid stat holidaysΒ
+ 3 paid days per year for professional development
+ December holiday studio closure (extra paid time off!)
+ Comprehensive health/dental benefits from day 1
+ Life insurance
+ $300 Healthcare Spending Account per annum
+ RRSP matching
+ Profit-sharing bonus program
If applying for an artistic role, please provide a link to your portfolio and/or demo reel.
Any questions about the role and/or accessibility requests can be sent to: [emailΒ protected]
Unfortunately, we cannot reply to everyone. Only successful applicants will be contacted about the next steps. Thank you for your understanding.
If you are interested in the role, please apply even if your experience and skills donβt perfectly match our ideal credentials. We are committed to inclusion and especially encourage members of historically marginalized communities to apply. As an equal opportunity employer we encourage applications from all qualified individuals. BBI does not discriminate against applicants based on gender, race, national and ethnic origin, religion, age, sexual orientation, marital and family status, and/or mental or physical disabilities.
Blackbird Interactive is privileged to be developing our projects on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xΚ·mΙΞΈkΚ·ΙyΜΙm (Musqueam), SkwxwΓΊ7mesh (Squamish) and sΙlΜΓlwΙtaΚΙ¬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.