Machine Learning Engineer – AI-Powered Font Categorization & Recommendation System
Location: Remote
Type: Contract/Freelance with Potential for Long-Term Role
Compensation: Competitive Hourly Rate + Potential Equity for Long-Term Contributors
About the Project
We’re building an AI-powered font categorization and recommendation app that seamlessly integrates with Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts, and other online libraries. Our goal is to revolutionize how designers and creatives discover, pair, and use fonts by leveraging machine learning, computer vision, and AI-driven recommendations.
This is an exciting startup opportunity for a self-led Machine Learning Engineer who is not only highly skilled in deep learning, font classification, and recommendation systems but also has a strong passion for graphic design, typography, and UI/UX. If you’re looking for a chance to work on cutting-edge AI applications for creatives, this role is for you.
Why Join Us?
Self-Led Role in an Innovative Startup – Take full ownership of the ML architecture and implementation.
Opportunity to Shape the Product – Your work will directly impact how designers and creatives interact with fonts.
Flexible Work & Potential Long-Term Growth – This role starts as a contract position with the potential for an expanded leadership role, including equity options.
Project Timeline & Scope
Phase 1 (0–2 months): Prototype a font classification and recommendation model using computer vision and clustering techniques.
Phase 2 (2–4 months): Improve model accuracy, integrate with API data sources (Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts), and deploy a scalable ML backend.
Phase 3 (4–6 months): Optimize real-time AI font pairing recommendations and enhance user personalization features.
Who We’re Looking For
- A Machine Learning Engineer excited about typography, design tools, and AI-driven creativity.
- Someone who thrives in a self-driven environment with a passion for building intuitive AI experiences.
- A problem solver who can balance ML research, engineering, and deployment in a real-world application.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and develop machine learning models to classify fonts based on visual characteristics and contextual usage.
- Develop an AI recommendation engine to suggest font pairings using existing font libraries.
- Work on integrating the app with APIs from Adobe, Google Fonts, and other font providers.
- Implement unsupervised learning models for clustering similar fonts and supervised learning models for prediction tasks.
- Use NLP and computer vision techniques to extract features from fonts and categorize them based on multiple attributes (e.g., style, serif/sans serif, etc.).
- Continuously optimize the machine learning models for performance and scalability.
- Collaborate with front-end and back-end teams to ensure smooth integration of the models with the application.
- Provide clear documentation of the models, including any assumptions and limitations.
Required Skills & Expertise:
- Strong expertise in machine learning algorithms and frameworks (TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch).
- Proficient in Python, with experience in relevant libraries (scikit-learn, NumPy, pandas).
- Experience with computer vision (OpenCV, deep learning for image processing) and natural language processing (NLP).
- Familiarity with APIs for integrating third-party font libraries (Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts).
- Proven track record of developing AI-based recommendation systems and clustering algorithms.
- Ability to work with large datasets and extract meaningful insights from raw data.
- Experience deploying machine learning models in production environments.
Bonus Skills:
- Experience with user personalization and font pairing algorithms.
- Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud) for model deployment and scaling.
- Experience with UX/UI design in machine learning contexts.
Project Timeline: Estimated duration: 3-6 months, with potential for ongoing work.
If you’re ready to take on a self-led, high-impact role in a startup poised to change the way designers use fonts, we’d love to hear from you!
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $60.00 - $100.00 per hour
Expected hours: No more than 40 per week
Compensation Package:
- Profit sharing
- Stock options
Schedule:
Application Question(s):
- How would you design a hybrid recommendation system that combines collaborative filtering with deep learning-based visual analysis for font pairing?
- What are the trade-offs between using a traditional CNN vs. a Vision Transformer (ViT) for font classification, and which would you choose for this project?
- How would you structure an unsupervised clustering approach to group fonts with similar aesthetics without predefined categories?
- If an ML model is biased toward recognizing only Western typography, how would you improve its generalization across global scripts?
- How would you design a scalable API for serving font similarity searches using vector embeddings, ensuring low latency and high accuracy?
Work Location: Remote