Meet the SpruceID Team: Arjen van Veen

About Arjen

Although my educational background is as a geophysicist, I became an IT consultant out of University. I was exposed to what was then still described as the “SSI” (Self-Sovereign Identity) space. I got hooked on the idea of helping to build a privacy-preserving digital experience and wanted to join a company solely focused on exactly that, which is when I found SpruceID.

Can you tell us about your role at SpruceID?

I’m a software engineer at SpruceID, working, among others, on open standards implementations such as the OpenID family and the ISO 18013-x specifications. I’m excited that some of our Rust libraries are already open-source and open for anyone to use, even if you still need to be somewhat of an expert to get started.

What do you find most rewarding about your job?

I love working on a team with the smartest people I’ve ever met. Seeing our solutions in the real world comes in at a close second.

What are some of the most important qualities for someone in your role to have, in your opinion?

Be collaborative and communicative within the team. This stuff is hard, and mistakes can have awful consequences. It’s best to build these solutions together.

What are you currently learning, or what do you hope to learn?

I will always strive to write better code. I’m still taking my first steps in the standards community and hope to become much faster at assessing protocols and identifying potential problems or missing features.

What has been the most memorable moment for you at SpruceID so far?

I’m going to go with our company retreat to Kyoto while the cherry blossoms were in full swing.

What's the best advice you’ve received since starting your job here?

“Don’t get stuck”

Meaning, it is easy to waste a lot of time researching something you don't understand properly when there might be somebody around who can give you a TLDR or move you forward immediately. So we don't want to pay the price of learning something over and over, especially in such a complicated space as ours.

How do you define success in your role, and how do you measure it?

If we securely get credentials into people’s hands and their day is improved by using them, that is what I count as a win! Similarly, if our open-source libraries gain wide adoption, that would be amazing, too.

What is your favorite part about working at SpruceID?

If you have an idea or want to pursue something, there is a path for you. Propose a new solution, attend a conference, introduce a new tool: if it makes sense, there is a way.

Also, there is a lot of respect for focus time for engineers.

Fun Facts

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?: I like guitar, gardening, and any type of sports, really. At the moment, it’s going to the gym and rock climbing.

What is your favorite coding language (and why?): Rust, for obvious reasons (our codebase is in rust).

If you could be any tree, what tree would you be and why?: I’ll choose the oak. It’s a tree that supports so many different species, and I’d get to live for a very long time.

Want to work with Arjen and the rest of the SpruceID team? Well, you’re in luck, we’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for our current openings. 

About SpruceID: SpruceID is building a future where users control their identity and data across all digital interactions.