About Us
Dalton Maag is a typeface design studio, founded in 1991. We work with designers and branding specialists worldwide to help every client find their best typographic expression – from logotype refinement and font licensing, to the creation of custom font suites.
Our team spans eighteen nationalities and speaks thirteen languages; we bring our design and technical expertise to every project, regardless of scope or ambition. Notable custom font projects include Airbnb Cereal, BBC Reith, and Lush Handwritten.
Our own ever-growing font library offers over 1,400 fonts across more than 60 families, ranging from versatile sans and elegant script to classic serifs and fresh display fonts, expertly designed with extensive writing system and language support.
Job Summary
As a software developer at Dalton Maag, you are part of a small team with diverse responsibilities. Your general goal is to help all other parts of the business by providing them with useful software that fixes problems and makes their work easier and more productive.
In our team, you get to use and learn recent versions of the tools and languages on which we rely, and modern software development practices: Python and Rust for font compilation and tooling; Astro, Vue, TypeScript for web development; GitLab and Docker for sprint planning, code review, and CI. The job is extremely varied in terms of duties and technologies.
The best part is that most of the code you write will be used by one of your colleagues: you chat with them to find out what they need, design a solution to their problem, and immediately see your work being useful to them.
Required Skills & Experience
General
- Communication and teamwork
- Good level of verbal and written English
- Relevant degree in computer science or software engineering, or relevant experience
Software Engineering
- Proficiency in several of the programming languages in use at the company, the tooling and best practices around them (mainly Python, TypeScript, Rust; also SQL, Ruby on Rails, PHP)
- Proficiency in modern front-end development techniques, the languages and tooling around them (Astro, Vue, HTML, CSS)
- Awareness of web performance, accessibility, and SEO
- Basic system admin and DevOps skills
- Ability to navigate client-server web systems and implement features in them
- Data modelling and querying skills
- Ability to capture business requirements and design matching solutions
- Algorithm and system design skills
- Basic maths and geometry knowledge
- Familiarity with open-source workflows and online etiquette
Type Design and Font Technology (desired but not essential)
- Awareness of global writing systems
- Awareness of the OpenType file format, its specification, and table formats
- Awareness of – and basic knowledge in – FontLab and Glyphs.app
- Familiarity with open-source fontmake pipeline, source file formats, UFO, and designspace
- Familiarity with feature file tricks, variable fonts tricks, COLR fonts, etc.
Responsibilities
Software Engineering
- Maintain and improve existing tools, in several languages
- Initiate new software projects, and oversee completion, to respond to business needs
- Take full ownership of software projects, collect issues, plan, prioritize, execute, and report progress, etc.
- Collaborate with users of our tools
- Provide code reviews for other members of the team
- Set up and improve team processes around releasing and deploying software, best practices for coding, and system design
- Research statistical and algorithmic approaches to ensure font quality, and to automate repetitive design tasks
Knowledge Management
- Support Font Developers with day-to-day use of Git, GitLab, and their other tools
- Contribute to the team’s documentation and other knowledge sharing activities, and support with the training of others
- Announce new tools and new features, empowering others in the company to get the most out of our team’s production
Toolchain
- Propose improvements to tools and file formats in response to business demands and to improve efficiency
- Contribute to open-source projects on GitHub, and to industry-wide standardization processes
- Advance the state of the art in open-source compilers, tooling, and formats for fonts
Account Management and Marketing
- Maintain and improve our website and online sales back-office
- Implement website features in collaboration with Digital Designers: design system components, interactive showcases of our variable fonts
- Support Account Managers with technical questions from clients; join client calls if needed, and help draft technical details in client emails
- Maintain and improve a database of knowledge about the world’s writing systems, languages, letter shapes, etc.
- Research data-science approaches to language knowledge curation and automated project pricing
Salary
From £52,010 per annum, depending on experience. Salary is reviewed annually.
Location
London, or flexible by arrangement.
To Apply
Please forward your CV along with a covering email to [email protected].
No agencies please.
