Behdad Esfahbod Résumé /behˈ·dɒːd ɛs·fæhˈ·boːd/ ▶

Portrait of Behdad Esfahbod

Behdad Esfahbod is an Iranian-Canadian software engineer and artist. Best known as the primary author of HarfBuzz, he has contributed to open-source fonts, text rendering, and internationalization for more than 25 years.

His creative practice spans game design, writing, photography, and experimental and essay films exploring identity, mental health, and the human condition.

behdad.org · behdad@behdad.org Edmonton, Canada

∞ Creative Practice

∞ Game Design

Markéta and Behdad in an illustrated Edmonton loft Markéta and Behdad in an illustrated Prague garden

2026 · Hidden-object game

Egg Hunt

Illustrated browser game and save-the-date. Creative direction, game design, and software engineering.

Play · Details · Source

I led the concept, game design, art and sound direction, testing, and iteration, working with AI agents on implementation. For more information, see the games page.

∞ Short Films

MANIA film poster

2024 · 5 minutes

MANIA

Writing, directing, videography, editing, sound, and production.

Narration by Brooke Leifso

Watch

For more information, see the films page.

∞ Film Awards & Festivals

∞ Film Production

2025 · Executive producer

Vital

Directed by Amir Zargara

IMDb

2022 · Co-producer

How Dare You Have Such a Rubbish Wish

Directed by Mania Akbari

IMDb

∞ Photography

2016–2026 · Selected work

Selected photographs

Bodies, bonds, places, and moments that linger.

View the collection

∞ Writing

Persian · English

چیزها و شعرها Pixels & Poems

Memoirs, poems, translations, and stories of travel, identity, memory, home, and technology.

Browse the anthology

∞ Exhibitions & Screenings

All were group shows. See also Film Awards & Festivals.

∞ Software Engineering

∞ Work History

  1. Software Engineering Consultant to Google Fonts Independent · Edmonton, Canada
    • Developed, standardized, and implemented major new Open Font Format features for ISO/IEC 14496-22:2026, then oversaw their rollout.
    • Develop and optimize HarfBuzz; co-develop HarfRust; advise on related Rust efforts.
    • Support the Google Fonts, Chrome, and Android teams with their text-rendering needs.
  2. Senior Staff Software Engineer Facebook Inc. · Washington State, USA
    • Added a build-configuration system to HarfBuzz to support embedded and mobile application clients.
    • Supported and optimized multiple teams’ use of HarfBuzz.
  3. Senior Staff Software Engineer Google Inc. · Canada & California, USA
    • Technical lead and engineer for Google Internationalization’s Fonts & Text Rendering team.
    • Brought HarfBuzz to production maturity and rolled it out in Android and Chrome.
    • Co-developed and rolled out OpenType variable fonts with Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Monotype.
    • Developed Android’s color emoji font format.
    • Significantly expanded FontTools and served as technical lead for fontmake.
    • Advised the Google Fonts, Chrome, and Android teams on text rendering.
    • Developed GLyphy, an OpenGL text-rasterization engine.
  4. Software Engineer Red Hat Inc. · Toronto, Canada
    • Created HarfBuzz.
    • Developed and maintained Pango, Fontconfig, and the Cairo graphics library.
    • Concurrently served on the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors (2006–2010), including as President and Chairman (2008–2009).
    • Maintained desktop and text-rendering components in Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
  5. Co-Founder Sharif FarsiWeb Inc. · Tehran, Iran
    • Advised technical teams developing Sharif Linux, a Persian Linux distribution.
    • Consulted on technical and legal aspects of free and open-source software.
  6. Researcher and Senior Developer FarsiWeb Project · Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
    • Co-developed Iranian national standards ISIRI 6219 for Unicode-based Persian information interchange and ISIRI 9147 for Persian keyboard layout.
    • Engineered Persian-language support for open-source projects including Mozilla, KDE, and GNOME.
    • Significantly expanded FriBidi.

∞ Software Projects

Since 2005 HarfBuzz Primary author & developer Text-shaping engine used in Android, Chrome, and other platforms. Since 2025 HarfRust Co-maintainer & developer A fully safe Rust port of HarfBuzz, widely used in the Rust ecosystem. Since 2013 FontTools Co-maintainer & developer Python toolkit used by fontmake and other font production tools.

More open-source projects on my GitHub.

∞ Papers & Talks

25+ years of work Papers, talks & studies Fonts & text rendering open-source engineering—from FarsiTeX to HarfRust. Browse the documents archive

∞ Web Design & Development

behdad.org homepage with its red typography, portrait, and software project cards

Personal website

behdad.org

Personal portfolio and publishing archive for software, films, photography, and writing, with responsive layouts.

Website

Wedding website with illustrated invitation cards and the markéta & behdad heading

Interactive invitation

markéta & behdad

Interactive wedding website featuring Loft Day and Egg Hunt, with a distinct visual identity and an English/Czech interface.

Website · Source

HarfBuzz World with font controls, a colorful emoji preview, and a shaped-glyph table

Font playground

HarfBuzz World

Interactive playground for text shaping, font subsetting, and raster, vector, and GPU rendering. Runs in the browser with WebAssembly.

Website · Source

These are modern static HTML5 websites. I led the design and iteration, working with AI agents on implementation.

∞ Technical Recognition

  1. O’Reilly Open Source Award For developing HarfBuzz
  2. Google Summer of Code Grant for developing preload
  3. Gold Medal 12th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2000), China
  4. Silver Medal 11th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 1999), Turkey

∞ Past Software Projects

Selected open-source software projects from my earlier work.

∞ Education

  1. Evening MBA Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada
  2. M.Sc. in Computer Science University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  3. B.Sc. in Computer Engineering Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran