Engineering data trust at scale: A conversation with Adrian Galvan, Senior Software Engineer

Describe a recent technical challenge you and your team had to navigate. What made it complex?

Let’s take our Lethe’s data subject request (DSR) system. We might start with an email address and then need to traverse multiple data sources to fulfill the request. For database integrations, we generate queries and map relationships between tables.

When it’s database access, that can be straightforward enough. API integrations, of course, are much more complex – you can’t just write a simple SQL “SELECT” query. Each service has its own endpoints, authentication methods, response formats. We’ve built a system that interprets these as a DAG that can handle this variety, and which can be mapped onto any new API we connect to, and all without becoming overly complicated.

Has anything landed on your desk that made you stop and think: how are we going to solve this?

Honestly, given enough time, I think we can do anything! It’s easier, of course, when it’s a new “greenfield” project or some brand new feature. No matter how complex, those are always really fun. But more often it’s an existing application or feature set which doesn’t exist in isolation and might be core to a lot of other workflows. You have to be really careful about how you go about making those changes.

But we have a very strong team here — developers with extensive technical skills and experiences, great product and design teams that we’re able to lean on — so yeah, honestly, if we’re clear on what needs to happen, and we have enough time, I think we can do anything!

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We might have a workflow that works, but we’re always asking: ‘How can we make this more intuitive? Can it be better for someone from the legal side? Can we make it easier or more approachable for all different personas?’”

What aspects of the work keep you motivated?

Privacy is a fascinatingly complex space. We’re building systems that need to work for many different user types, across legal and technical teams, and making sure everything helps our clients comply seamlessly with all the various global privacy regulations.

One of the most interesting things we’re working on right now is standardizing our approach to code structure and testing. As a growing startup with a phenomenal team of engineers from diverse backgrounds, we’re working to establish “the Ethyca way” of building privacy-first systems that scale.

Our challenge is finding elegant ways to capture all the requirements and make them actionable. So we might have a workflow that works, but we’re always asking: “How can we make this more intuitive? Can it be better for someone from the legal side? Can we make it easier or more approachable for all different personas so the user can really understand everything that’s going on?”

That’s something we’re still working on, and it’s exciting to keep refining it and keep making it better.

What qualities define someone who succeeds at Ethyca?

I think communication is one of the biggest indicators of success. Privacy is complex, and nobody expects you to know everything. The people who thrive here are those who aren’t afraid to ask questions, who gather information and raise a flag on any difficulties, complexities or unknowns when they spot them. Communicate, communicate and over-communicate! Anybody that comes in with those traits has a good chance of being very successful here.

How does your team stay productive across time zones and distributed collaboration?

We have a great culture at Ethyca where you’re encouraged to reach out on Slack whenever you have a thought or question, and it’s understood people will respond when they’re ready. 

I might be on the West Coast thinking about a problem late at night and message someone on the East Coast. I know they’ll get to it in the morning, and that’s perfectly fine. There’s an environment of great mutual respect here. Everyone is trusted to manage their own time.

What first drew you into engineering?

Oh wow! It started with a TI-83 calculator in my high school calculus class! I was reading the manual and realized, “Oh, I can program this.” I’d spend time after homework trying to build little games on it. It was a perfect blend of math and programming and that really captured my interest. All the roads from there led me here.

What’s your favorite way to unplug outside of work?

I love to cook. Sometimes it’s simple things, but when I have some downtime, I’ll tackle something complex that might take all day.

We have some like-minded friends that love hanging out and spending an entire Saturday together, just saying, “Okay, what are we going to make today? What’s our entree? What are our desserts?” We just chat and catch up all day. Being able to spend a day with friends and family and home cook a meal together — or several meals! — that’s one of my favorite ways to unwind.

Ethyca builds the trusted data layer for enterprise AI. Our mission is to embed privacy and governance directly into data infrastructure—so that organizations can scale with confidence, meet regulatory demands, and accelerate responsible innovation. To join the team shaping this new standard, explore our open roles. To see how Ethyca operates in production, request a demo.