Tom Schaefer
Retired at Schaefer Research & Consulting
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolTom Schaefer is a retired technology leader and founder with 15 years of formal industry experience and a multi-decade career bridging academia, product engineering, channel management, and technical sales. He built and led solutions teams at Intermec and LXE, launched partner programs through a Honeywell acquisition, and founded Schaefer Research & Consulting to advise on vertical markets, solutions development, and talent mentoring. A hands-on engineer as well as strategist, Tom is the original creator of well-known pfSense packages like countryBlock, IPblocker, and StrikeBack, contributing backend and DevOps work to the pfSense packages repository. His background includes teaching RF data collection and systems integration at Ohio University and developing wireless barcode systems for Cummins, illustrating a rare blend of academic rigor and practical systems engineering. Based in Indianapolis and enjoying retirement as a snowbird with his grandkids, he remains available for advisory roles that benefit from his cross-functional experience and mentoring focus.
16 years of coding experience
45 years of employment as a software developer
Associate of Science (A.S.), Math and Science, Associate of Science (A.S.), Math and Science at Jefferson Community CollegeBS, Physics, BS, Physics at Rochester Institute of TechnologyMS, Physics, MS, Physics at Indiana University Bloomington
Github Skills (14)
sh10
pfsense10
firewall10
script10
shell10
package-management10
scripting10
freebsd9
php9
iptables8
networking8
devops7
automations7
automation7
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
pfsense/pfsense-packages
Jul 2010 - Dec 2011
pfSense packages repository
Role in this project:
Backend & DevOps Engineer
Backend & DevOps EngineerContributions:60 commits in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to the pfSense packages repository, focusing on the creation and modification of packages. Their work included updating existing packages, such as the countryblock and ipblocklist, by adding features like logging, statistics, and dependencies. They also created new packages and made changes to the package installation process, including file management and the integration of widgets.
pfsense
tommyboy180/hamcam
Jun 2026 - Jul 2026
Contributions:10 pushes in 7 days
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