Milan Rook
Software engineer, Rotterdam. Law, translated into engineering.
Milan grew up in Eindhoven, the son of a Dutch father and a Czech mother, and studied applied mathematics in Twente, where he wrote his thesis on queueing models. He taught himself enough backend development to get hired by an e-commerce company in Amsterdam. When the GDPR started applying in May 2018, the privacy work landed on his desk largely because nobody else wanted it: deletion requests that had to reach a dozen services, and a consent banner whose choices most of the stack never saw.
Most of what he knows about the law came from long sessions with the company's privacy lawyer, where he learned to turn legal requirements into state diagrams and to bring the questions back when a diagram didn't fit. He now works as a staff engineer at a logistics software company in Rotterdam and still owns its consent and data-retention design.
Outside work he builds mechanical keyboards, soldering the switches himself, and sails a small dinghy on the Kralingse Plas when the wind allows.
What does this requirement mean when someone has to build and operate the system?
- Based in
- Rotterdam, by way of Eindhoven
- Trained as
- An applied mathematician, in Twente, with a thesis on queueing models
- Day job
- Staff engineer at a logistics software company, owner of its consent and data-retention design
- Learned the law
- In long sessions with a privacy lawyer, one state diagram at a time
- Off the clock
- Mechanical keyboards he solders himself, a dinghy on the Kralingse Plas
- Writes most about
- gdprcookie-consenttooling
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