The Type Founders is hiring a font engineer

Paley Dreier
Paley Dreier Posts: 2
in Job Postings

Introduction

The Type Founders (TTF) is home to some of the most renowned type foundries from around the world. Our mission is to strengthen our foundries’ legacies through ongoing development of new typefaces true to their brands and promotion of their work. We are searching for an experienced font engineer to help us continue to build out our growing library of more than 6,000 fonts.

Role

Font engineer and library manager

Duties and responsibilities

As font engineer and library manager, you will collaborate with our CTO and VP of Type to develop, maintain, and update the technical standards of our font library; verify that any font data we acquire or develop meets these standards; and develop, upgrade, and employ tools or scripts to update our font data to ensure it meets these standards. Your primary responsibility will be managing our large library of diverse fonts to guarantee their quality, reliability, and performance across a wide range of applications and platforms. Tasks may include:

  • Engineer the construction of color fonts and test in browsers and apps.
  • Batch convert font data between formats and select the best production path to preserve metrics, kerning, OpenType features, etc.
  • Set, compare, fix, and test font name tables.
  • Write complex OpenType features, automate standard features, test, and resolve any errors.
  • Gather data in various formats and organize in GitHub repositories
  • Recreate and automate the application of various design treatments, like textures on font outlines, rounding of terminals, inking techniques, etc.
  • Improve and develop glyph proofing and comparison tools.
  • Write Python scripts to report, compare, move, splice, and merge font data.
  • Troubleshoot and test distributor reports, validation errors, and fails; test cross platform performance between Mac and Windows.
  • Remap, modify, and generate characters and fonts per custom requests.
  • Improve variable font compatibilization, perform roundtrip conversion from Glyphs to Robofont, write designspace files, generate and test variable fonts.

Requirements

  • Experience with type design and font development working in all major software applications including RoboFont, Glyphs, Fontlab, and TTX.
  • Expertise with Python scripting, comfortable with the command line, and development workflows in GitHub.
  • Knowledge of font formats and standards, like OpenType, UFO, WOFF, Variable Fonts, and Unicode.
  • Familiarity with type history and typography with a keen eye for type design details.

This is a remote position; qualified candidates from any location are encouraged to apply. TTF offers competitive compensation and flexible working hours, though candidates must be willing to overlap several working hours per day with our team based in the eastern United States and western Europe. Interested candidates should email info@thetypefounders.com.

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