Lead Type Designer & Font Developer

About Studio DRAMA

Studio DRAMA is an independent brand and type design studio based in London.

We work with ambitious brands and creative partners around the world to create distinctive identities and custom typefaces. Our work spans brand design, type design and technology, with typography sitting at the heart of much of what we do.

We’re looking for a Lead Type Designer & Font Developer to join our growing type team and help us design, build and deliver exceptional fonts.

The Role

This is a hybrid role for someone who sits naturally between type design and font developer.

You’re a type designer who loves drawing, but you’re equally excited by making fonts work.

You care about the shape of a letter, but also what happens when that letter becomes part of a complex variable font, gets installed across thousands of machines, embedded into a digital product or dropped into a global brand ecosystem.

You’ll contribute creatively to the design of our typefaces while taking a leading role in turning those designs into robust, beautifully engineered and production‑ready fonts.

From drawing and interpolation through to engineering, QA, scripting and troubleshooting, you’ll help ensure everything Studio DRAMA releases looks great and works brilliantly.

What You’ll Do

Type Design

• Design and develop custom typefaces alongside our wider type team.
• Draw and refine high-quality letterforms across weights, widths and styles.
• Contribute creatively from early exploration through to final design.
• Develop character sets and extend existing designs while maintaining the integrity of the original idea.
• Work across variable font systems and complex design spaces.
• Contribute to Studio DRAMA’s custom client projects and growing retail typeface library.
• Bring a designer’s eye to technical decisions rather than treating production as a separate process.

Font Engineering & Production

• Take typefaces from design files through to robust, release‑ready fonts.
• Engineer and deliver complex font families.
• Build and maintain variable font systems.
• Manage interpolation and complex design spaces.
• Develop and implement OpenType features.
• Manage kerning, metrics, naming, character sets and font metadata.
• Generate and validate fonts across required formats.
• Support multi‑script and extended language projects.
• Ensure fonts meet appropriate technical standards before delivery.
• Maintain clear and organised production files, version control and release documentation.

QA & Troubleshooting

A major part of this role is making sure our fonts work brilliantly once they leave the studio. You’ll:

• Lead technical QA across Studio DRAMA font releases.
• Test fonts across operating systems, browsers and key creative applications.
• Diagnose and resolve font bugs and compatibility issues.
• Investigate problems reported by clients and identify practical solutions.
• Troubleshoot installation, rendering, interpolation, OpenType and application‑specific issues.
• Work directly with client technical teams when required.
• Build repeatable testing processes that catch problems before delivery.
• Support clients through font implementation and rollout.
• You should enjoy the detective work involved in figuring out why something isn’t working and how to fix it.

Tools, Scripting & Automation

We want you to help us improve not only the fonts we make, but how we make them. You’ll:

• Identify repetitive parts of our production process and find smarter ways to handle them.
• Write and maintain scripts that improve speed, accuracy and consistency.
• Help develop internal tools for font production and QA.
• Build smarter and more scalable production workflows.
• Explore how emerging technologies can improve type design and engineering.
• Introduce automation where it genuinely improves the work rather than adding complexity.
• Help give our designers more time to design.

Client & Project Support

• Work directly with global brands, agencies and their technical teams.
• Explain technical font considerations clearly to non‑specialists.
• Advise on font formats, implementation and delivery requirements.
• Help scope technically complex projects before work begins.
• Support clients during implementation and rollout.
• Collaborate with designers, developers and external language specialists.
• Troubleshoot real‑world font problems after delivery when required.

Leadership & Knowledge Sharing

• Establish and maintain best practices for font engineering and production across the studio.
• Mentor designers in the technical aspects of type design.
• Improve documentation around our production processes.
• Run internal sessions on tools, workflows and technical developments.
• Help improve the technical capabilities of the wider type team.
• Contribute to a culture where design and engineering aren’t treated as separate disciplines.

What We’re Looking For

You’ll likely have:

• A strong portfolio of type design work.
• Excellent letter‑drawing and typographic skills.
• Significant professional experience producing fonts.
• Advanced knowledge of Glyphs and contemporary font production workflows.
• Strong understanding of interpolation and variable font technology.
• Experience developing OpenType features.
• Excellent understanding of kerning, metrics, naming and character sets.
• Experience debugging and QAing fonts across platforms and applications.
• Experience with scripting or programming for type production.
• A strong understanding of font formats and contemporary font technology.
• Experience delivering complex type families to clients or for commercial release.
• The ability to communicate technical issues clearly to designers and clients.
• Experience with Python, fontTools and other font production tooling would be particularly valuable.
• Experience with multi‑script font production is also a bonus.

The Person

We’re not looking for a pure engineer who happens to work with fonts.

We’re looking for a type designer with a technical brain.

Someone who genuinely loves drawing letterforms, has strong visual judgement and wants to contribute creatively to the work, but who also gets satisfaction from building systems, solving problems and delivering technically excellent fonts.

You might spend the morning refining a character set and the afternoon figuring out why a variable font is behaving differently across Figma, PowerPoint and a browser.

That combination should excite you.

You’ll be naturally curious, meticulous and persistent. When something doesn’t work, you want to understand why, solve it and ideally find a way to stop the same problem happening again.

As Studio DRAMA grows, you’ll have the opportunity to shape the tools, processes and technical standards behind everything we release.

Working at Studio DRAMA

This is a full‑time, permanent position based in London, with a salary of £45,000–£55,000 depending on experience.

We work together in our London studio four days per week, with one day working from home.

Our projects are highly collaborative and we want senior members of the team to be present, sharing ideas, reviewing work and contributing to the wider studio.

Benefits include:

• Performance‑related bonus
• Foundry profit share scheme
• Pension
• Healthcare
• Exercise benefits
• Paid holiday
• Hybrid working, with one WFH day per week
• Regular studio socials and events
• Opportunity to work with major global brands
• Opportunity to help shape a growing independent studio and type practice

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