Cdr Rutger van der Werff was born on April 13th 1969 in Vlissingen, the Netherlands.
He joined the Dutch Naval Academy in Den Helder in August 1995 for a period of nine months and was subsequently assigned to the mine hunter HNLMS Middelburg as trainee officer.
In 1997, he was assigned as MHO (Minehunting Officer) on board HNLMS Schiedam. He participated in MARCOT’ 98 which took place near the coast of Nova Scotia (Canada).
In 1999, he became MHO on board of HNLMS Hellevoetsluis.
In 2001, he was appointed XO (Executive Officer) of Minehunter Schiedam and later that year as XO on board of HNLMS Maassluis.
Between 2002 and 2009, he had a spell outside the navy as a manager of the international security company G4S (Group 4 Securicor)
In 2009 he returned to the navy to become XO on board of HNLMS Vlaardingen.
In 2010, CDR van der Werff attended the Advanced Mine Warfare Course and Mine Warfare Staff
Officer Course at EGUERMIN (Belgian-Netherlands Naval Mine Warfare School – Oostende, Belgium)
From 2011 to 2014 he was assigned as Head of the team Training Facility at Eguermin (Ostend)
From 2014 to 2017, he became CO of HNLMS Schiedam. In 2015 the ship joined SNMCMG1.
In March 2017, he joined Eguermin to become the head of the planning department. He stayed at that position for 4 years
In August of 2021, he switched to the ABNL Mission Support Centre, to become head of that office.
After one year, he had the opportunity to change positons and be promoted.
From August 2022, he is the Branch Head Concept Development & Experimentation at the NATO NMW COE, co-located with the BEL NAC in Ostend. In September of that year, he participated in REP(MUS) 22
Cdr van der Werff lives together with Jolanda and has two sons, Roar and Reidar.