Rainer Gerhards

Adiscon founder · rsyslog maintainer · AI & data pipeline architect · Municipal Councilor in Großrinderfeld

Großrinderfeld, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

About

I build systems that process operational data at scale. I am the creator and long-time maintainer of rsyslog and founder of Adiscon. For roughly four decades I have worked in system-level programming, networking, logging infrastructure, and large-scale event pipelines, always with a practical and engineering-focused mindset. My current focus is integrating AI into the full rsyslog and Adiscon ecosystem. I lead our AI strategy by applying machine learning where it strengthens reliability, clarity, or developer efficiency — while keeping human control over architecture and decisions. The goal is to improve how teams build, document, run, and support critical logging systems, and to open new business opportunities around applied AI. This includes AI-supported code exploration and refactoring assistance (always human-reviewed), AI-enhanced documentation and knowledge extraction, AI-powered support tools such as the rsyslog Assistant, and AI in CI/CD workflows. I also work on intelligent agent systems based on modern RAG and emerging graph-RAG techniques, and on AI-assisted observability and log intelligence for future anomaly detection and operational insights. These activities form our approach to AI-driven collaboration: human-guided development workflows, clearer and more complete documentation, support tools backed by curated knowledge, AI-assisted deployment guidance, and forward-looking observability capabilities that help teams work more effectively. Across all these efforts, I follow the principle that shaped rsyslog from the beginning: robust and predictable systems first, and innovation only when it delivers real operational value. If you work in applied AI, logging, observability, data pipelines, or intelligent tooling for complex systems, I am always open to exchanging ideas or exploring collaborations.

Experience

  • Municipality of Großrinderfeld ()
    • Deputy Mayor
      Jul 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 1 mo

      Serving as Deputy Mayor of Großrinderfeld ("Zweiter Bürgermeister-Stellvertreter"), supporting the Mayor and Municipal Council in administrative, strategic, and representative duties. Focus on transparent communication, pragmatic decision-making, and fostering digital and sustainable development initiatives.

    • Municipal Councilor (Gemeinderat)
      Jul 2019 - Present · 7 yrs 1 mo

      Elected member of the municipal council, contributing to strategic planning, digital infrastructure, and local governance. Focus on practical, fact-driven decision-making and transparent communication with residents.

  • Adiscon GmbH ()
    • Maintainer / Lead Developer, rsyslog project
      Mar 2004 - Present · 22 yrs 5 mos

      Founder and lead maintainer of the rsyslog open-source project — a high-performance, flexible logging and data-pipeline system used worldwide in enterprise and cloud environments. Oversee architecture, feature design, and release strategy, ensuring long-term reliability and scalability across Linux distributions. Build and nurture a global developer and user community through mentoring, documentation, and collaboration with contributors, distributions, and partner organizations. Promote responsible open-source development practices, community governance, and continuous modernization — from traditional syslog to today’s AI-enabled observability pipelines.

    • Project Lead Developer, Windows logging Solutions
      Jan 1997 - Present · 29 yrs 7 mos

      all hands person - maintaining logging projects at whole

  • Founder and Chief Software Architect at Adiscon
    Jan 1997 - Present · 29 yrs 7 mos

    Working on closed and open soure tools, mostly in the logging, auditing and IT security field.

  • Investigator at FernUniversität in Hagen
    Feb 2017 - Dec 2017 · 11 mos

    Investigation on multi-goal optimization for task graph schedules, in particular in regard to power consumption and renewable energy use.

  • Guardtime (3 yrs 1 mo)
    • Technical Advisor
      2012 - 2015 · 3 yrs

    • Technical Advisor
      2012 - 2015 · 3 yrs

    • Technical Advisor
      2012 - 2015 · 3 yrs