Location
London (Hybrid: 4 days in studio, 1 day remote)

Hours
Full Time, Permanent

Salary
£45,000–£55,000 depending on experience

About the Role
Studio DRAMA is an independent brand and type design studio based in London, working with ambitious brands and creative partners worldwide to create distinctive identities and custom typefaces. Typography is at the heart of much of what we do, spanning brand design, type design, and technology.

We are seeking a Lead Type Designer & Font Developer to join our growing type team. This hybrid role suits someone who naturally bridges type design and font development. You will contribute creatively to designing typefaces while leading the process of turning those designs into robust, production-ready fonts.

Your responsibilities will include drawing and refining letterforms, working across variable font systems, engineering complex font families, managing interpolation, OpenType features, kerning, metrics, and font metadata. You will lead technical QA, troubleshoot font issues, and support clients during implementation.

Additionally, you will help improve production workflows through scripting and automation, mentor team members, and contribute to a culture where design and engineering are integrated disciplines. This role offers the opportunity to work with major global brands and shape the tools, processes, and technical standards behind everything we release.

Experience
- Strong portfolio of type design work
- 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 (Python, fontTools preferred)
- Experience delivering complex type families to clients or for commercial release
- Experience with multi-script font production is a bonus

About you
You are a type designer with a technical mindset who loves drawing letterforms and has strong visual judgement. You enjoy solving problems, building systems, and delivering technically excellent fonts. You are naturally curious, meticulous, and persistent, eager to understand and fix issues while preventing their recurrence. You communicate technical issues clearly to designers and clients and thrive in a collaborative, growing studio environment.

Qualifications
While formal qualifications are not specified, a strong portfolio and demonstrable experience in type design and font development are essential. Proficiency with relevant tools and scripting languages is highly valued.